Bloodthirst
by Ash The Wanderer
Summary: In the wake of Consuming Madness, a new threat emerges from the shadows to terrorize the Briefs family, and Vegeta and all he loves will learn that hatred burns with an eternal flame...
1. Chapter 1

**__**

Bloodthirst

There was no light as he worked, but he knew what he was doing. He did not need the rays of any star or the emissions of any glass bulb to aid him in his task. Besides, those very rays seemed to shun him, almost as if they could refuse to shine on him, they would.

He didn't care. Indeed, many things were beyond his caring. It had been destined to be, and he accepted it, had even grown to love it.

He took some slow steps back, and then suddenly there was light, a dim light that gave the room some illumination as the moon crept out from behind a death shroud of clouds. It was his only witness to his actions, and it acted like it, as his face lay in heavy shadow, as if the moon, like it's brother the sun, refused to cast it's beams on him.

He made a noise of arrogant non-chalance, followed by a low chuckle of mirth. The moon had no light of it's own, instead reflecting, stealing in a sense, the rays of the Yellow Giant star that served as the source of all life for planet Earth.

He knew all about stealing , the theft of things you took so that you could have something you could not product on your own. The moon was lucky. It took it's light from something that gave light for the sake of doing it. It would never have to worry. It was just a chunk of dead rock, reflecting the light of a star.

If only society could learn that what applied to the moon and sun did not apply to them.

But society hated to learn anything, especially anything that took away from it's pricipal pleasures.

Another noise broke the room, a small sob, and the figure, dressed in black jeans and a black shirt, looked over to it and smiled. His redemption was awake. Time for more fun.

The little boy was eight at the most. Had he been a normal child, he could have screamed. But his screams were all gone. He could no longer summon the air to do anything but take shallow breaths. In his mind, he wished he could lose that ability too.

Then he was there, and the child looked up in fear. The moonlight obscured him, but it glinted on the knife the figure held.

"Why…what did I ever do to you…" the child cried softly, and then he felt the cold steel under his throat, accented by the sharpness of the blade. The blade rose softly, and the boy gasped as it cut into his skin. His blood began to flow, wreathing the knife in crimson, before the precious life liquid fell to the floor in small drops.

"You…did nothing."

For whatever reason, perhaps the ignorance of innocence, or the fuzzy moral idea that everyone had a conscience, the boy felt a surge of hope. Maybe this man, the man who had taken him, hurt him, would be letting him go.

Then the knife bit deeper, and the hope shattered even as the killer spoke his next words.

"And that's what makes this so damn…saitisfying."

Some time later, the killer emerges from the shadows, a faint smile on his face as he looked at the newspaper he had bought this morning.

"Kiester Child still missing." He muttered, reading the headline to himself. "After four days, the search for young Triner Kiester continues with no luck. Edmund Kiester, a lawyer with the firm Kiester & James, has yet to receive any ransom demands. He and his wife Sally have appeared on several TV shows and in several articles begging for their son's return…"

The killer trailed off into a low chuckle.

"Oh, he'll be returning, Edmund. The only thing is, he'll be returning in a box. Or maybe…a few boxes."

With slow pleasure, the killer cut the article from the paper with his knife, even as some drops of blood dripped onto the newsprint, obscurring the words. He didn't care. He didn't want the fine print. He just wanted the headline.

Removing the article, the killer walked over to the wall and added it to the 23 others that were stuck there. He smirked. Soon there would be a 24th, and unlike the last one, and unlike others in his collection, it would show no hope. Just the grim face of reality.

And destiny.

"Ransom…HA! Edmund, your grief…the fact that you will go through your life shattered thinking you could have done something for your son…you could have saved him…that is better then any sum of money you could ever give to me."

Smiling, the killer turned and looked at the corpse of the boy hanging on the wall. He'd gone too far with his fun, but it didn't matter. He was due to move on. Triner was the last. It was time for him to play the last and best hand of his destiny.

"Fate is cruel…isn't it child?" he whispered to the carcass. "Who knows what you might have been? Happy? Sad? Handsome? Ugly? Rich? Poor? Remembered? Forgotten? Who knows…I once wondered that every day, every hour, every minute, every second. But know I now. I was blessed with enlightenment in reward for my suffering."

The killer lowered his head and chuckled again, a low sound of malice and cruelty.

"My future, my destiny...is to make sure you and your fellow spawn have none. Your father…his kind, all of them…won't have any either. You lucked out. You are shattered beyond repair now. Their shattering will happen until they too die...day by slow day…while everything falls apart around them. Marriages…friendships…faith…everything. I know them too well. They are people who lived their lives on their fragile pillars, and I…am the wrecking ball that will knock them all down, never to be rebuilt. And the fools have no one to blame but themselves! They needed their godhood, and the tragedy they suffer…it is only the pun ishment they deserve."

The killer smirked to himself again, and then turned around to look at another montage. This wall was covered with pictures, all of one woman, a woman getting on in years but still beautiful, with shining eyes and a lovely smile covered by a lovely wreath of green hair.

"It is time…" he whispered, looking at the pictures, hate and fury in his eyes.

"I thought you were different. I hated them all…all of them…I hated them and I have made them all pay…but you were different. I loved you...I loved you so much…and you scorned me! You laughed at me! Was it my scars? Was it my flaws that I tried so hard to overcome? I thought you…I thought you coukld understand…but you laughed. You laughed. And you will suffer for it!"

The killer tossed the knife in the air in a slow flip and caught it blade first, and then hurled it with deadly accuracy. It buried itself in the picture forehead of the lone picture that was not of the woman who the killer spewed venom at.

"You…you child, will be my last…my masterpiece…my weapon to make the worst of them all suffer. My blood should flow through your veins! Instead…it was his, him, of all people! He's not even human! And she chose him over me! You should be mine…but your mother scorned me…she scorned me…and you…you will be the one. I will shatter your mother for her crime. I thought she didn't want godhood. I was wrong. It's time for my destiny to come to a head…soon, child, soon. I want to taste it slowly."

The killer turned away, back towards the body of Triner. Moonlight briefly illuminated his eyes. They glittered with insanity.

"I may not be a superhuman madwoman, but when I'm done…you'll wish I was, Bulma!" the killer said, speaking the name as a curse.

And as the killer was swallowed back into the shadows, a brief beam of moonlight passed over the picture of a young girl that the knife was buried into, even as collected moisture from years of abandonment flowed in a slow stream from the hole the knife had made. It mixed with flaking red paint, giving an image that the picture was bleeding.

The little girl's resemblence was uncanny to the woman's whose pictures dominated the wall.

Bra Briefs.

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Ok, if I get good feedback on this little sample, I'll keep writing this new story. So tell me (be detailed), do you think this has potential or not, please?


	2. Chapter 2

Part 2
    
    "Dr. Gohan! I think I am going to require some more thallium for this experiment! Could you please pass me some?" came the voice of a young man. He had red hair and a face that was sprinkled with freckles, and an easy, goofy smile as he did his work. That smike quickly vanished, but not because he had found some reason to stop wearing it. Instead it was because of the mask he had slipped over his face to help ensure he did not breathe in any of the chemicals he was working with. Most were harmless, but some, selaed tightly away in beakers and canisters, were not. And accidents always happened when you let down your guard.

Gohan smiled and nodded his head in agreement, even as he turned and walked across the room, heading for the sealed room where the most dangerous chemicals were kept.

"Morning, Son." Said a white-haired scientist as he passed the hybrid. Gohan reposnded by smiling and pushing his glasses up his nose. The gesture had somehow become his sign of greeting, and Gohan figured it wouldn't hurt anyone if he didn't know how or why.

"Morning, Dr.Wily." He said in return, and moved on. As he headed for the chemical room, he received more greetings from his fellow scientists and doctors as they arrived to start a new day of whatever they were working on. Gohan himself was between projects at the time, which was why he was busying himself by playing errand boy. That, and Chad was a nice guy. Gohan always liked doing favours for nice guys.

"Morning, Dr. Gohan." A petite blonde in a lab coat that seemed far too big for her said as she passed by him.

"Good morning Sherry."

"Hey Gohan!" came a voice. Inside, Gohan winced. _Oh no…_

"I got a new joke for you! You wanna hear it?" said Steve Saunders, as he bounded out the open door he had seen Gohan pass by with all the enthusiasm of a child.

Gohan looked at Steve. Jokes were Steve's obession, indeed, he was the lab's stand-up comic and general clown. On one side, Gohan felt that the workplace was that: the workplace. All work and no play, and Jack could solve his problem of being a dull boy when he had time to solve it instead of the problems his work presented him with.

Then again, Gohan was no stuffed shirt, indeed, he had tried to avoid it after the whole Agony incident. Life was too short, and while he felt a workplace was for work, there was nothing to say it couldn't also be for humour.

Then _again,_ Gohan could swear that Steve was slowly trying to drive him insane by telling him dirty jokes that appeared to be clean jokes until the punchline hit. Gohan liked to laugh (indeed, Steve had once done a hilarious impression of Vegeta, who he had seen when he was dragged along by Bulma for one of her inspections. That had had Gohan on the floor helpless with laughter), but dirty jokes were not his forte or to his taste.

"Ok Steve. What's the joke?" he said in a guarded tone.

"Why was the Boy Scout thrown out of the Scouts?"

Gohan arched his brow. This didn't seem like it could lead to any kind of dirty answer.

"I don't know, why?" Gohan replied.

"Because he was eating the Brownies."

Gohan's eyes narrowed in confusion. Why would a scout be expelled from his group for eating sweet treats, and what was so funny about…

Then he realized what kind of brownies Steve was talking about.

"OH STEVE!" Gohan exploded. "THAT'S SICK!"

"Why?" Steve asked, with all the innocence of a dollar whore.

"Because it is!" Gohan spluttered, trying to wipe the joke and the mental images it brought to mind away from his conscious.

"Why?" Steve asked again.

"ARGH! Get back to work!"

"Yes mommy." Steve said, and turned and headed back into the door, laughing good-naturely that he had gotten Gohan once again.

Gohan looked after him and a mischievious smirk crossed his face. He raised a finger, and a small dart of ki lanced from it and zapped Steve in the rear.

"YE-OW!" came Steve's cry. Gohan chuckled to himself.

"Steve, I grew up with Goten and Trunks. You can't out-smart me when it comes to one-upmanship." Gohan chuckled again, and headed for the chemical room.

Some time later, Gohan had returned after giving the thallium to Chad to the main testing room. Here, there might be dozens of experiments going on at any time, and with none at the moment to dedicate himself to, Gohan wanted to see where he could help out so that he didn't grow bored.

Later, Gohan has helped with several chemical tests and circuitry experiments when he came across a familiar face.

"Hey, David!"

David, a former partner of Gohan's, looked up from the newspaper he was reading. His normal cheerful face was not present this morning. Instead, it was replaced with a look of sadness and disgust.

"Hey Gohan. Can you believe this?" David said, tossing the paper down on the table in front of him. Gohan picked it up and looked at it.

"Kiester Child found dead." He said, his mind uncomprehending.

"Not just dead. Hacked to pieces! With a machete! What kind of sicko…UGH!" David said, throwing up his arms in exhasperated and helpless fury, before dropping his hand and running it through his black hair.

"Sigh. David, don't let it get to you." Gohan said. He didn't know the child, but he felt for the parents. Any parents who lost a child would receive all the sympathy he could give them from afar.

"I know…but...it just drives me nuts! What is this world coming to? What with gas attacks or leaks or whatever the hell it was that caused that mass coma/halluciantion epedemic and…I swear Gohan, I don't know how you reached your age without growing cynical."

"Oh, I had my chances in that area, but I never gave into them. Emotions are powerful, but they are controllable. My life has taught me that, if anything. I figure your life would have taught you more, David."

"Hey Gohan, are you making fun of my age? I'm 45, not 75!"

"Yes, as you are fond of saying. Anyway, have you been working on anything?"

"Nothing special. Same old, same old. Test new chemicals, test old chemicals, mix them and see what you get…I'm currently working on something that might help epiletics with their seizures…besides that…it's just the same stuff, along with trying to keep some of our "fellows" away from our friends that help us with our discoveries."

"Yeah? You're still working on trying to bar certain people from the lab animals?"  
"Specifically, Goliath and his two Philistine friends."

"You mean Fred, Robert, and Alex."

"Yeah, them. It's bad enough that some of these animals have to die, but I can accept that they're helping us. A noble cause, if I may be so arrogant. However, that does not give us the right to torment them, rattle their cages, poke them with empty syringes, and above all else, give them chemicals for no reason other then to see what happens because it is "cool"!" David half-yelled, standing up. He sighed and walked over to his station.

"I have to get back to work. I'll be seeing you, Gohan."

"Yeah, be seeing you, David."

As David went back to work, Gohan turned and suddenly found himself face to face with Sherry.

"Dr. Gohan, there's someone here looking for Mrs. Briefs. Says he's an old friend. He calls himself Yamcha."

"Yamcha? Did he have a little cat-creature with him?"

"Floating over his right shoulder."

"Yep, that's Yamcha. Send him to speak with me, I'll deal with it."

Gohan leaned against the wall, and it wasn't look before the old friend of his father showed up in the hallway. Gohan reached out and took Yamcha's hand in a firm grip.

"Good to see you Gohan."

"You too Yamcha. Where's Puar?"

"Oh, I left her back at the lobby to play with some kids. She claims the chemical smell makes her sick. So how have you been?"

"Fine, Yamcha." 

The two went into an exchange of news as scientists walked around them. Not many gave a second glance to the tall fighter with black hair and a scarred face.

"So why do you want to see Bulma?"

"No reason, I just needed to tell her something. Some of my own catching up, know what I mean?"

"I have an idea. Well, you're probably here because you couldn't ring her at home, am I correct?"

"You know me too well."

"Fighting for your life besides a person will do that to you. Well, Bulma wasn't at home because today she was planning to do her semi-annual inspection. It's a corperate PR thing, know what I mean? You'd better watch out, she dragged along Vegeta again, and that's sure to put him in a foul mood."

"Veggieman? I thought he had mellowed."

"He has, but that vanishes pretty quickly when you are being dragged to something in which you have to "look at a bunch of dumb pointless baka things and a bunch of bakas doing those dumb pointless baka things". I think he'd rather be at home training, or spending time with Bra."

"Yeah, he's pretty protective of her now, isn't he?"

"Deathly so."

"Right…" Yamcha said in a far-off tone.

"Yamcha? You alright?"

"Huh? Oh yeah, I'm fine."

"Ok, godd. Well anyway…"

"Dr. Gohan!" Sherry said as she was suddenly at his side. "You're needed in Lab 4!"

"Problem?" Gohan said, turning to the woman.

"Nothing serious."

"Ok." Gohan replied, turning back to Yamcha. "Sorry Yamcha, but Lab 4 is restricted to personel only. You'll have to stay here…hey, David!"

"Yeah?" David said, poking his head out of his work station as Gohan walked over.

"This is my friend Yamcha. Would you mind is he stayed in here until I come back, so he doesn't get in anyone's way?"

"But won't he get in my…yeah, sure, why not." David sighed.

"Thanks. You're a good guy, David."

"I try." David muttered, as Gohan walked back to Yamcha.

"Yamcha, that's Dr. David Solomus. He's a friend. He's gonna look after you until I get back."

"Look after me? I can look after myself!"

"Yes Yamcha, but you see, your precociousness mixed with your extreme libido is a catalyst for trouble and thus I justify the inscrutable exhortations of my soul my leaving you in David's care. Ta." Gohan said quickly as he led Yamcha over to David's workstation and quickly left.

"Ok…wait a minute, what the hell were you talking about?" Yamcha said to himserlf.

"In other words, he just wants to make sure you don't get into any trouble." David said as he continued to work.

"Well, why didn't he say so?"

"He did. Could you pass me those goggles uh…Yamcha, wasn't it?"

"Oh yeah, sure."

Yamcha handed the goggles to the scientist, and David paused in the act of putting them on to look at the fighter.

"Man, what gave you those scars on your face?"

"What? Oh nothing. I'm a martial artist, it comes with the territory. I've had them for years, it's never bothered me."

"Still…it kind of detracts from your image."

"Oh buddy, you have no idea." Yamcha whispered. David has turned away and gone back to work.

"You know, I know a very good plastic surgeon. He could probably fix those really cheaply if you needed it."

"No thanks David."

An awkward silence followed.

"So, what are you doing?"

"In simple terms, I'm mixing chemicals to see what happens."

"Can I help?"

"No, although I thank you for offering. However, if you want, you could pass me materials if I need them. Just don't touch that group of vials over there."

"Why not?"  
"They're not nice chemicals. Especially that one marked "AE". Above all else, don't touch that one."

"Why not?"

"One, it's very valuable to me. Two, if even the tiniest bit gets on you, and that's possible even though I've corked it tightly, you will have a very unpleasent experience."

"What's that?"

David looked over in exhasperation, pushing up his goggles as he took off his disposible gloves to swap them for a fresh pair.

"You're really bored, aren't you?"

"Yeah. I figured I would be able to speak with Bulma right away. Instead, I have to go through a system. Figures. What would the chemical do to me?"

"Make you cough up your lungs, vomit up your spleen, and make your intestines leak out through your nose." David said as he turned away from Yamcha to get the new gloves.

A brief bit of noise made him turn around again, and he saw that Yamcha had backed away from the vials as far away as he could go in the work station, as if he was afarid the vials would bite him. David looked at him, and Yamcha stared back.

Then Yamcha got a "wait a minute" look on his face as a smirk spread across David's face.

"Gotcha." David chuckled.

"That's not funny."

"Maybe, but I'm serious. That chemical will hopefully help epiletics when they have seizures by calming the mis-firing nerves in their brains. But only if you have epilepsy. Do you have epilepsy, Yamcha?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"In figured. In that case, if you, and anyone else who doesn't have epilepsy, gets any of this chemical on your bare skin, your brain becomes confused by trying to calm mis-firing signals that aren't mis-firing, and that, well, causes other signals to mis-fire. In other words, if you don't have epilepsy and you get that on you, it will cause you to _have_ a seizure. Ingesting it is even worse, but I don't think I have to worry about you doing that."

"Uh huh." Yamcha said. He turned as David went back to work.

"Hey, what's that?" Yamcha said, pointing to a handle that was attached to one of the cabinets. David looked over to it.

"That's my personel mini-fridge. I get thirsty a lot, so I keep drinks stocked there."

"What kind of drinks."

"Fruit juice, soft drinks, the usual."

"Can I have something?"

"No you may not. Those are my drinks. If you're thirsty, there are drinks in the security room. The guards's on break, so I don't think he'll mind if you swipe one."

"Where's the security room?"

"Over there." David said, pointing. Yamcha looked to where he was pointing and went over there, while David continued to work.

Some time later, David realized that Yamcha was taking far too long to get a drink, and went to the security room to see what was going on.

What he found was what he was expecting.

"Yamcha, what are you doing? Get away from there!" David said, as he hurried over to where Yamcha was sitting at the massive desk the guards normally looked over. Yamcha turned away from the security camera footage he was watching.

"Oh sorry David, I just saw all these TV's and I couldn't help myself. I feel like the ultimate voyeur." Yamcha said. David rolled his eyes in annoyance.

"Did you touch anything?"

"I don't think so."

"Well, not to call you a liar, but I have to make sure. Move, will you?"

Yamcha moved aside as David began to check the screens on which you could see everything going on in the Capsole Corp building.

"Hey David, where's the camera for the girl's showers?" Yamcha said jokingly.

"We don't have any in there." David snapped.

"Hey, calm down buddy. I'm just joking around." Yamcha said, faintly alarmed at David's angry tone.

"Sorry Yamcha. It's just this." David said, pointing to a row of buttons, switches, and small dials under every screen. "Do you touch any of these?"

"I don't THINK I did…"

"You see these screens? These switches control all the important aspects of the rooms the camera is showing. Temperature, air pressure, humidty, everything. You hit the wrong switch, we could lose a 20 million dollar experiment because the moisture in the air is too low or too high or something. You claim you didn't hit anything, I have to make sure you didn't, even by accident or something."

"Oh. Geez. Sorry David."

"Yeah Yamcha, I'm sure."

Yamcha went back to looking to the cameras as David methodically checked every switch and dial under the screens.

"Hey look!" Yamcha said, pointing at one of the screens. "There's Bulma!"

David glanced over to the camera.

"So it is." David said. "I know that area. She'll probably come to this area of the lab next. Oh great, she's brought Vegeta with her again. I don't see why she drags her husband along with her, he hates this and he disturbs us at our work."

"That's Vegeta. Say, where's a bathroom?"

"Over there." David said, pointing to a door at the far end of the security room.

Yamcha went off to the washroom. David finished checking the dials, and saitisfied with his work, he left to go back for his work station.

Vegeta was bored out of his skull. His mate just kept stopping and talking and stopping and talking, all in terms he didn't understand. To make it worse, Gohan was accompanying them, and to top it off, he had told him that Yamcha was around, and he wanted to speak with Bulma. Why, Gohan didn't know. Vegeta sighed and amused himself in thinking of all the bad things he could do to Yamcha if whatever he wanted to talk to Bulma about upset her.

"And over here, we have the Tornado Alley Cyclonisphere…" Gohan said, as he and some of his fellow baka scientists led Bulma over to another project and Bulma dragged Vegeta along with her. Vegeta sighed. The suit he had on itched, his feet were starting to hurt in the tight shoes he was wearing, and the tour didn't look like it would be ending any time soon.

The figure, looking around to make sure no one saw him, slowly apporoached the security desk. He took one last glance around to make sure no one was in or planning to enter the room.

His eyes fell on the camera where he could see Bulma and Vegeta, and he let out a low hiss of hate.

"Well, we're alone now, so let's see how you take the heat, Vegeta."

Slowly, the figure reached down and seized the small dials that controlled the heat in the room the Briefs were currently in and began to twist, turning the heat up degree by degree.

"Bulma, how much longer is this going to take?" Vegeta asked his wife as he was moved along to yet another project.

"I don't know sweetie. These inspections can take forever sometimes. Be patient."

"I would be patient if we could at least get out of this baka room! I'm sick of staring at these baka walls and these baka faces and these baka everything! At least let us go to another room! And is it me or is it getting hotter in here?"

"It's probably you, sweetie." Bulma said jokingly, and before Vegeta could snap a remark she was drawn away to look at another project.

Vegeta stood there, trying to figure out if it was his imagination.

He sooned realized that it wasn't, as sweat began to bead on his forehead and his hair began to wilt. It seemed like he was getting hotter by the second.

His throat began to bristle. He was thirsty.

"And that's all, Mrs. Briefs. Now, perhaps you'd like to inspect the main workstations?"

"I'd love to Gohan. But call me Bulma."

"Sorry. Here you are my boss, I call you Mrs. Briefs like everyone else."

"Oh Gohan…"Bulma giggled. But the giggling was quickly stifled as Vegeta pushed by her and went on ahead, going through the door into the hallway where the group had been heading.

"What's with Vegeta, Mrs. Briefs?"

"Oh, I don't know. This is dreadfully boring for him, but I need his input on rare occasions. Speaking of which, why do you call him Vegeta while you insist on calling me Mrs. Briefs?"  
"One, he's not my boss, two, if I called him that I think he would Final Flash me across four time zones." 

Bulma giggled at the comment, and then noticed something.

"Gohan, is it hot in here? Vegeta said he thought it was, and now I can't help but feel he was right."

"Come to think of it, there is a rather high increase of heat. Vegeta's higher senses must have noticed it much faster. William! Radio to the security desk, see if something's wrong with the heat!"

David returned from fetching another vial of a certain chemical he was using to find Yamcha's head in his mini-fridge.

"HEY!" David yelled. Yamcha nearly hit his head on the roof of the fridge before he turned around guiltily, an open glass bottle of grape juice in his right hand and the cap in the other.

"David! Oh, hi. Um, well, you see, there was nothing in the security room that I liked, and you weren't around, so I figured…"

"GIVE ME THAT!" David said, as he put down the vial carefully and snatched the open bottle of juice from Yamcha, putting it down on the table.

"Oh come on David. Why can I swipe drinks from the security guy and I can't swipe drinks from you?"

"Because I would notice, and I really like my grape juice!" David said. So wrapped up was he with Yamcha that he didn't notice Vegeta enter silently from another door.

Vegeta was parched. The hallway had seemingly been even hotter then the previous room, and he hadn't been able to fly or do anything that would get him to the nearest source of moisture quickly, lest some security guard see it and start getting ideas. The less people who knew he was an alien, the better. The last think he wanted were tabloid articles with his picture in it.

And so Vegeta had half-staggered into the room, looking for the nearest bathroom, sink, or anything else that gave off something drinkable. His eyes were drawn to the argument. It was Yamcha, there he was, and one of the baka scientists who worked for Bulma, and they appeared to be arguing over a drink…

A DRINK!

"You know, that drink doesn't have your name on it. It should be as much mine as yours."

"I bought it with my money. It's mine!"

A loud burp cut off Yamcha's reply, and the two looked to see Vegeta putting down the now-empty bottle.

"It's gone." Vegeta smirked saitisfyingly.

David looked at Vegeta.

"Well, I guess that solves our problem."

The door opened again to reveal Gohan, Bulma, and the trailing scientists.

"Well, Mrs. Briefs, this is, as you know, our...rather empty…workstation." Gohan said, pushing his glasses up his nose.

"Bulma!" Yamcha said.

"Hello Yamcha. How are you?" Bulma said in a friendly but dry tone.

"I'm fine. Look, sorry to come and interrupt your workers, but I needed to speak to you…" Yamcha said, before Vegeta cut him off.

"Later, baka. She's inspecting."

"Oh Vegeta, I can pause for Yamcha." Bulma said. Gohan, off to the side, felt a sudden pressure on his shoulder and turned to see David had grabbed him lightly.

"What's Yamcha's relationship to her anyway?" David asked. 

"They used to date."

"Really? Man, that must have ended a long time ago, knowing how long she and Vegeta have been together."

"Yeah. It ended, but they've remained pretty good friends. By the way David, where is everyone?"  
"After last time, when the heard Vegeta was going to arrive soon, they all found other things to do, in other parts of the building. Which reminds me, I have other things to do myself." David said, and excused himself. Gohan looked after David's leaving form and chuckled on how everyone tried so hard to avoid Vegeta. He was a fireracker, but Gohan knew him a lot better then anyone else, and in the end, he wasn't that bad.

Vegeta leaned against a wall of one of the workstations. His wife had been talking with that baka Yamcha for nearly fifteen minutes, and he was getting agitated. Having Gohan aroun as the only person he knew was not the most relaxing thing either. He did however, find small comfort that everyone else was trying to avoid him. It gave him a feeling of power.

"Hmm, looks like they're done." Gohan said, and Vegeta looked up to see Yamcha leaving through another door, and rather quickly. Bulma stared after him. Vegeta didn't like the look she was wearing.

"What did he say?" Vegeta said as he walked to Bulma's side. "What?"

Bulma looked at Vegeta, and Gohan could see a faint hint of sadness in her eyes.

"It was nothing Vegeta."

"Tell me!" Vegeta said.

Bulma sighed.

"He said that today was the anniversery of our…breakup. He said that knowledge had caused him to do some thinking and he said…he said…"

"What did he say?" Vegeta said, fury creeping into his voice.

"He said that after looking at Bra, he wished that if he'd know that such a sweet little girl like her could have been his, that he would have done everything to keep his errant eye under control. He then said he hoped there were no lingering hard feelings between us. I said theer wasn't, he said good, he wished again that Bra could have been his, and then he left. I actually found it rather touching…thus my eyes. He didn't upset me, Vegeta, before you ask."

Vegeta turned towards the door where Yamcha had gone and then Gohan's hand was on his shoulder.

"Let it go, Vegeta. He meant no harm. He's just regretting past acts and trying to make good on them. Nothing else."

"How can you be so sure?" Vegeta snarled. Sensing trouble, the other scientists that had accompanied Bulma, Vegeta, and Gohan quickly left.

"Come on, Vegeta. You could kick Yamcha's ass twenty times over before he could even begin to attack you. Do you really think that he would want to do something to make you angry?" Gohan said.

Vegeta pulled away from Gohan, but he did not pursue Yamcha.

"I suppose…you…are…r-i…." Vegeta suddenly trailed off.

"Vegeta? Vegeta, is something wrong?" Bulma said, as Vegeta suddenly trailed off as he raised his arms.

"I don't…I feel so…stiff…"

And then it all happened at once.

Vegeta's body's suddenly erupted into an incredibly violent series of shakes as Bulma screamed. Vegeta fell to the ground, trying to scream, but all that came out were a strained series of gargles.

With a ripping noise, Vegeta's jacket and shirt tore from the violent shakes that tore through his body as Vegeta writhed on the floor in a helpless fit.

"Gohan!! What's going on!?!?!?!??" Bulma yelled, and then screamed again as foam suddenly erupted from Vegeta's mouth, thick white liquid that gushed down his cheeks and chin. Vegeta's body seized up and his upper teeth suddenly scissored over his bottom lip, nearly slicing it clean off, as blood began to pour down his chin, mixing with the foam.

Gohan had stared in shock for a few seconds, not understanding or believing what was happening, but then he sprang into action.

"He's having a seizure! Medics!" Gohan yelled at the security office. "Get medics here now! We have a seizure!"

"Oh Vegeta…oh god…" Bulma said in helpless horror as Vegeta spasmed on the floor, bloody foam pouring from his face. His eyes suddenly seized opened and Bulma could see his pupils had gone to the size of pinpricks. His arms spasmed and suddenly a ki blast flew from his hand. Bulma gasped and turned around as the blast hit the wall and blew it and couple of workstations to hell.

"GOHAN! HE CAN'T CONTROL HIS KI!" Bulma screamed. Gohan turned around from where he was giving the security guard orders and his eyes widened as Vegeta's arms spasmed again. He grabbed the security guard and leapt halfway across the room with him before diving to the floor as another ki blast flew from Vegeta's hands.

The security office exploded in a fireball, as flaming wood and metal shrapnal pelted the room. Alarms began to go off as Vegeta writhed on the floor. More ki flew, and the room began to be blown to hell and gone.

Bulma didn't really remember what happened next. She could remember fires and explosions, screams and yells, the faint image of Gohan throwing his body in front of the ki blasts before Vegeta's out of control power could collaspe the entire Capsole Corp building around his ears, medics arriving, and finally Gohan jamming a needle into Vegeta's neck and Vegeta's body finally calming down, finally free of the horrible seizure that had taken him.

And then she remembered nothing, as she finally passed out.

And as alarms rang and people ran away, screaming at the noise, the figure walked calmly among them, a cruel smirk on his face.

Bulma awoke in a hospital bed, slowly coming out of her faint. The first thing that came to her mind drove her back into a panic.

"VEGETA!" she screamed, suddenly sitting up.

"Shhh! Bulma! It's all right! It's all right!" Gohan said, as he stood up from the chair he had been sitting at and took Bulma's shoulders.

"Gohan…Vegeta…" Bulma stammered, trying to get up before shock made her sit back down.

"Vegeta's ok. The antidote we gave him stopped his seizure. It's all right, I gave him a Senzu bean. He'll be fine…for now."

"For now? What do you mean, for now?"

Gohan sighed.

"I don't know how to tell you this…but someone slipped Vegeta a chemical, we don't know how. But whatever it was, it gave him the eqivilant of an epiletic seizure, and a serious one. The antidote stopped the chemical…whatever it was…but it was only temporary. Vegeta's system will have to clean the chemical out of his bloodstream. Until it does, he'll keep having random epileptic seizures…although nonse as serious as the last one. I'll give you the proper medicine."

Bulma stared, trying to grasp the situation. Someone had _poisoned_ Vegeta? A million questions flooded her mind, which was followed by a tidal wave of anger.

"WHO DID THIS, GOHAN!?!?!?" she suddenly roared as she got out of the bed. "Who tried to hurt Vegeta?!?!?!"

"I don't know yet Bulma. We're running tests on Vegeta's blood to see what the chemical was, and we're sifting through the wreckage of the workstation. However, whoever gave him the poison…we'll know. Only a few people could have administered it directly to him. The chemical didn't take too long to start working, so I'm thinking it was most likely someone who was in the workstation five-ten minutes before it happened…" Gohan trailed off. The people closest to Vegeta had been himself, Bulma, David, those scientists that had been following Bulma around…

…and Yamcha.

"I don't know who it is yet. But trust me, I will find out."

The killer, smirking, looked up on the large mansion the Briefs lived in. The Capsole Corp afternoon had gone swimmingly. Now it was time to put the icing on the cake. Slowly, the killer headed around the giant house until he found the window he knew led to the window that Bra Briefs slept in.

"So will Daddy be alright?" Bra asked, as Bulma carried her young daughter up the stairs to her bedroom.

Bulma sighed. The rest of the day had been hetic, with Vegeta being utterly furious at being poisoned, and Bulma having to expend all her energy to keep him calm, make him understand his situation, and also explain to her kids. Trunks understood easily, but Bra had been a lot of work.

"He'll be fine, sweetie. He'll be acting wierdo for a few days, but then everything will be all right. Don't worry, everything will be fine." Bulma replied, although she didn't fully believe her own words. Vegeta's reaction that he had been attacked and yet he had no apparent target to strike back was driving him utterly crazy. And Bulma knew it went deeper. Whoever had done this…he had appealed to a fear only a saiya-jin could have so deeply: the fear of being helpless.

And not many people could know Vegeta that well. Only people who had fought with Vegeta could possibly know him so well.

And in the room where the horrible incident had happened, there had been two people who possessed that knowledge.

Bulma mentally kicked herself. She was being stupid, she reasoned.

__

Yes. She thought, as she opened the door to Bra's room._ I'm being stupid. They couldn't…_

Then she flicked the light switch on.

There was a moment of silence.

Then she began to scream.

Trunks burned up the stairs, his hair ablaze in the golden power of the SSJ, and turned into the hallway.

His mother was crouched down against the wall opposite the open door to Bra's, screaming and crying. Bra was holding her mother, more afraid of her mother's reaction then what she had seen in her room.

"Mom? MOM! Are you all right?" Trunks said, kneeling down and grabbing his mother. There was a thumping noise and then Vegeta was up the stairs and heading into the hall as well.

"Oh god…oh kami it's horrible…" Bulma cried. Trunks looked at his crying mother one last time and then he and Vegeta headed into Bra's room.

And stopped in shock.

The entire room was covered in writing, words written all over the walls, floor and ceiling, written in a sinister script in blood red ink. And it all said one thing.

****

SHE SHOULD BE MINE.

Later, when Trunks was trying to coax his mother and sister to sleep, Vegeta saw it said one other thing, written across the wall above Bra's bed like an evil predator marking it's prey.

****

RAMTOS GE RAMOS.

It was hard to translate, but Vegeta had spent many hours learning about the planet he had chosen to call his home, and one of his specialties was language. It was Latin, a very basterdized style, and the words it said chilled him to the bone.

The Slaughterer of Lambs.

And elsewhere, the killer tossed his knife into the air and watched as moonlight glinted on it before catching it on the way down and pressing it against his cheek. He chuckled, a low evil sound.

"Oh Bulma, if you think it's bad now…you ain't seen nothing yet. It is only just beginning, and my destiny will shed far more blood then I already have!"

__

To Be Continued, as you probably guessed.


	3. Chapter 3

Part 3
    
    It was immensely slow work, and it was driving Bulma up the wall, as various police and other law enforcement officers sifted through the rubble of the wrecked parts of the Capsole Corp labratories. The most annoying thing was, in the end, they weren't doing anything that could help her with the serious problem. She couldn't exactly tell them that her husband was an alien prince that could summon the power to do this easily, and that the destruction had been caused when he had a sudden, never before experienced epileptic fit.

Last night had been hell. First Vegeta, and then whoever it was had gotten past all the security measures her home had to paint those horrible words all over Bra's bedroom. Finally, Vegeta had had another fit in the middle of the night again. Bulma had quickly gotten him the medicine so no more uncontrolled ki started flying again, but watching him lie there with the foam on his mouth as he recovered from the utterly exhausting spasms had been heart-wrenching.

And underneath it all was her nagging thought that the suspect was…a man she called a friend even after he broke her heart.

Bulma didn't need this. Her hair was already starting to grey, and she didn't need anything to speed that up, as well as threaten her family. She had been out during the whole Agony holocaust, and had missed everything. Now it appeared fate was paying her back.

"Mrs. Briefs!"

Bulma turned to see Gohan approaching her, bringing her another scientist. Her heart perked up. With the police investigating a red herring in exactly how the explosions were caused, Gohan had gone to speak with his fellow scientists on if there was anything they had with them that could give people sudden epilectic fits. If Gohan was bringing her someone, that meant they had found something.

"Yes Gohan?"

"I got something. Tell her David."

"David? Wait, I know you. You were the only scientist in the work station when this happened. Why is that?"

"Your husband is not the most…liked person, Mrs. Briefs. So everyone found a reason not to be there. I had my work to do, but then he drank my drink and then…"

"Excuse me, he did what?" Bulma interrupted. David looked confused, and then recounted the situation where he had told Yamcha not to go into his drinks, yet he had caught Yamcha doing it anyway and snatched it away from him, only to have Vegeta walking into the room and drink it when he wasn't looking. As he was finishing up, a look of realization and horror fell over David's face.

"Oh dear god…I have to go see my workstation! I hope to god it wasn't demolished!" David said, as he turned and hurried into the crime scene. Some police tried to stop him, and as David began to argue with them, Bulma turned to Gohan, worry creasing her face.

"What exactly is going on, Gohan?"

Gohan gave a quick, technical explanation of the chemical that David had been working on to help epiletics, and how if it were ingested by a non-epiletic, it would cause the exact effect that Vegeta had suffered from.

Bulma's face grew more and more shocked, and she turned to the police, telling them to let David through and following him as he picked his way through the rubble over to where his workstation must have been.

Unfortunately, he was out of luck. He stopped at a certain pile of rubble and let out a curse.

"So much for that hope." He muttered, as he looked a pile of wrecked wood, metal, and glass. "This was where I kept the chemical."

Bulma's heart sagged. David sighed and leaned his temple into his fingers while he was standing.

"Ok, you were looking for what poisoned your husband, right, Mrs. Briefs?" David asked in a voice of mild annoyance and stress. Gohan could feel for his friend. Whoever had done this to Vegeta had hurt David too, in the fact that Vegeta's seizure had wrecked all of David's experiments.

"Yes, Dr…?" Bulma said. 

"Solomus, but just call me David. Ok, my chemical causes epilectic fits in the non-epiletic, so we will assume, for now, that Vegeta came into contact with it. I called it _Aulonousymwas Epilesisis,_ or AE for short…" David trailed off.

"What is it, David?"

"I just remembered something."

Bulma sat at her desk, staring at the wood. David's words had shaken her to the bone.

"I don't want to believe it." She muttered to Gohan, who sat, his chin resting on his crossed fingers.

"Neither do I…but this looks pretty bad, Bulma. It would probably be enough for a guilty conviction in a court…but this is not a court."

Gohan sighed, stood up, and looked out the window.

"Ok, so David said he caught Yamcha with an open drink. David took it away, Vegeta drank it, and then had his seizures. That doesn't mean anything."

"Or it could mean everything." Bulma said in a dull monotone.

Gohan went over and slammed his hands on her desk, causing her to look up in startled fear.

"I won't believe it! Yamcha is a good man! He would never do this!"

"But then who would paint "She should be mine" all over my daughter's room just hours after Yamcha had wished the same thing?" Bulma said.

"Anyone could have done that!"

"Anyone? Does anyone had the ability to slip past all my house's security systems, or get into my daughter's room via a second story window, or have the speed to write all those sentences in a short enough time so that he could write them all and be far away by the time they were finally discovered?"

Gohan was silent.

"Ok, we have means, and possibly oppourtunity. But what the hell is the motive? The only thing I can think of is your previous relationship, but why would he wait so long?"

It was Bulma's turn to be silent.

"I don't know. But I'm scared, Gohan. I'm really scared."

Gohan ground his teeth.

"I've told the police to look for pieces of a shattered glass bottle that would be too thick to be a normal chemical vial. If we find something like that, we'll test it. David said his drug would probably leave a residue on glass, and he gave us its chemical makeup. IF we find it in the bottle…" he said, before trailing off. Then he turned to leave.

"I'm going to find Yamcha, and hear his side. Then we'll see if this is as ridiculous as I think it is."

Gohan left, and Bulma was left to herself. Again, she stared at her desk, as the emotionless eye of the security camera stared at her from it's position on the ceiling in the corner of the room.

Goku sat on a lawn chair in the Briefs estate, confusion etched on his face as he chewed on a turkey leg he had procured from the fridge in the Brief's kitchen.

"Someone POISONED Vegeta?" he asked incredulously.

"Yeah. I know how hard to believe it sounds, believe me, I didn't believe it when I heard it." Trunks said from his chair opposite Goku. Goku had shown up wanting to spar, and now Trunks had been faced with the task of explaining to Goku that Vegeta couldn't fight and why. This was made considerably more complicated by Goku's lack of knowledge in many areas.

"So I can't fight with him…because it would cause him to have more of these…piezgures?" Goku stumbled over the word.

"Seizures. Yes, it would cause his blood flow to quicken, and thus the chemical would get through his system faster and cause them in a shorter span of time."

"Awwwww. Poor Vegeta." Goku griped, although Trunks sensed an inkling of Goku's annoyance was because now Goku lacked a good fighting partner to spar with.

"Don't worry Goku-san. The chemical will be out of his system in a few days, and then he'll probably have an overload of fighting desire so you'll have a good match then…"

"But who am I gonna spar with until then?" Goku whined. Trunks felt a minor jolt of annoyance.

"Why don't you train with Ubuu?"

"I can't, he's attending his sister's wedding, and it was family and close-friends only. Unfortunately, to them I'm just his teacher and apparently that excludes me…Ubuu couldn't convince them otherwise, although he certainly tried…damn, weddings have a lot of food also." Goku whined again. Trunks rolled his eyes. Goku's at times child-like personality was a lot of things, and occasionally annoying as hell was one of them. Trunks decided he just would have to put up with it.

"Well, I'D offer to spar with you, but I have a date tonight and I don't want to risk injury." Trunks said.

"What he means is he's having a good hair day and he doesn't want you to mess it up." Came Vegeta's voice.

"Vegeta!" Goku said in delight.

"Toussan…" Trunks groaned at his father's bluntness.

"Don't act so shocked, Kakarott. This god-damned infernal poison may keep me from sparing, but it's damn sure not going to keep me from walking." Vegeta said, sitting down on a spare chair. He was wearing jeans and his pink "Badman" shirt.

"And it certainly doesn't seem to keep you from mocking your son." Trunks muttered.

"Oh be quiet you baka. You're vain about your hair and you know it."

"Yes, but I don't need your ever blunt opinion on it. Now if you don't mind, I have other things to do." Trunks said, and quickly took his leave.

"Our children haven gotten lazy. Your son spends all his time with his new wife, and mine spends every night out with those human girls! At least your son had somewhat good taste in taking the daughter of the Monk Who Was Formally Described as Bald and the robot as his mate, but my son…ugh!" Vegeta grumbled.

"Oh lighten up. He'll settle down eventually. I'm sure you'll like whoever he picks."

Vegeta stared at Goku.

"Oh yeah, I forgot I was speaking to you here." Goku said, as he took the last bite of the turkey leg and looked at it in disappointment.

"I swear, when I get my hands on who did this to me, I'm going to…" Vegeta snarled, changing the topic. His sentence ambled off into a series of fates he would inflict that he spoke of in the saiya-jin language. Goku strained to follow, but what he could make out was not nice.

Then an idea came to Goku.

"Hey! I know!" Goku said suddenly. Vegeta stopped his monolgue of nasty fates.

"You know? Kakarott, the only thing you know is that food tastes good and that someday I will beat your ass and prove my superiority over you."

"No. If I can't spar with you, I'll help you! I'll go see Bulma and help her try and find out who did this!"

Vegeta almost burst out laughing.

"YOU, Kakarott? Investigate? The only thing you know how to investigate is a fridge!" Vegeta howled, but Goku was already gone, flying off into the distance towards the Capsole Corp.

Vegeta keep laughing, and decided if he couldn't do anything involving fighting, he would take a short nap.

Gohan emerged from Yamcha's house in confusion. There was no sign of the scarred fighter at all, and Gohan knew that Yamcha usually spent all his time at home. He'd settled down and gotten various jobs since the Cell fights, and his latest was a computer job that kept him at home.

Yet he was no where to be found.

Gohan shrugged and flew off. He could find Yamcha later.

The killer watched as Gohan vanished into the distant sky.

"Looking for a suspect, Gohan? Oh, you won't be finding him any time soon." The killer chuckled, as he ran a hand through his black hair.

"Now, Bulma, time for Round 2."

Trunks whistled as he lovingly polished his prize possession, the 2003 Firebird Ferrari. It had been a birthday gift and he went everywhere in it when he wasn't in a situation that required flying. It also did a great job of enhancing his already incredible image of a hunk.

Whistling "We Gotta Power", Trunks finished up his job and left to go get ready for his date. He was worried about his father, but not hugely so. There was medicine to help him and it would be over in a few days. Nothing that required him to totally restructure his life.

Plus he was pretty sure that tonight he was going to hit a home run.

Vegeta awoke from his nap feeling groggy. He shook his head and stood up, heading for the house. He was thirsty and hungry as well.

Then he felt the incredible stiffness.

"Shit!" he curses, and scrambled to reach the house and get the antidote.

Too late.

Vegeta fell, his body wracked with spasms. As he jerked and twitched on the lawn, Trunks passed by a window and saw his father.

"TOUSSAN!" he screamed. In a blur of superhuman speed, he had grabbed the medicine from where he had put it and was out the door and at his father's side, trying to get the needle into a vein, which was made immensely complicated by Vegeta's seizure.

And in the chaos, neither of them saw the figure leap over the wall and run off along the wall, concealed by bushes and Trunk's distraction.

The killer headed around the house, smirking at Vegeta's helplessness. He hoped Vegeta was hating every minute of it. No one deserved to be helpless more then the arrogant alien who thought he was superior to everyone, even him.

But he had shown that his weakness allowed strength in other areas. He could never best Vegeta in a fight, he would never be able to, even when the saiya-jin had first arrived on planet Earth.

But that didn't mean he couldn't hurt the bastard, and make him suffer, and through it, make Bulma suffer as well.

But Vegeta's part in the play was done. Now it was time for the next act.

The killer smirked again as he saw the garage, and he headed towards it, slowly drawing a pair of wire cutters from his belt of small tools.

Goku's face wore a look of confusion again, but this time it was etched with concern.

"Ok…are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting, Bulma?"

Bulma's age was beginning to show, and the white lines of stress around her face only accented it.

"Yes Goku…I know it sounds unbelieveable…but…"

"But nothing, Bulma! I know Yamcha! You know Yamcha. You know him better then I ever could, and I KNOW he would never be able to do anything like that! It's not in his capacity, his heart, his…Yamchaness!" Goku said in a confusing mix of intelligence and lack of intelligence.

Bulma looked at Goku. _Oh Son…I know you mean well…but while you think you can see who people are…I'm not so sure you can. I'm not sure anyone can truly see who a person is if that person chooses to conceal it. I want to believe you…oh god I do…but…_

"Yamcha wasn't home."

Bulma looked up the doorway to see Gohan walking in. His face was also creased with worry. He noticed his father sitting in a chair. "Toussan. What are you doing here?"

"I came to help Bulma after I heard that Vegeta had been poisoned…but now I'm not so sure I want to, considering who you think poisoned him! Gohan, you and I trained with Yamcha, I would think that you and I would share the same opinions!"

"Yes Toussan…but…it just doesn't look good…all the arrows seem to be pointing at Yamcha…but I will tell you this. Until we are absolutely sure…we won't tell the police. We'll keep in "in the family", and if…it is…true…then we'll have to think of something…"

The three men clustered around the cage were of widely different appearences. They all wore lab coats, but the resemblenced ended there. One was a thin, oily rat-like man with greasy hair and a faint mustache. Another was bulky, almost fat, with pants that he kept having to pull up and a blonde crew cut that somehow managd to make a seeming comic figure look sinister. The last was the best looking of the three, with neatly combed black hair and a handsome face that was reminscent of a young James Dean. The look was only ruined by the look of delight mixed with fainy cruelty in his eyes.

The cage contained a monkey, whose name was Jeff. Jeff, at the moment, was looking with nervous fear at the three men. The three had made no moves yet, but Jeff could sense the intentions of them.

"So what are we gonna give one of these little creatures today?" said Rat Face.

"I don't know. Maybe we should give them some more of that derivitive of the drug Speed, what were they calling it again, Highway? Byway?" said Crew Cut.

"Bylines, Fred." Said the James Dean lookalike. "Although why they called that is beyond me. All I know is that they hope it could have some medical purpose. All I know is that it makes these stupid creatures go crazy! They throw themselves at the cage like there's no tommorow! It's hilarious!"

"Well, then, give them some Alex. I need a few laughs."

"I'm about to Robert." Alex said as he withdrew a syringe and began to outfit it with a blue-tinged liquid. "Just want to make sure I don't give the furry bastard an embolism before we get to see him…"

"Put the needle down."

The group of three men looked at the doorway. David stood there, his face laced with distaste and faint anger from the actions of the three scientists. Alex stared for a second, then a faint grin crossed his face.

"Well, look, it's the monkey lover."

"I'm serious Alex. Leave the animal alone. If we have to inject chemicals into them, it will be for medical purposes, not for fun." David said, as he walked closer to the three men. His calm voice was laced with hostility.

Alex stood, looking, and then he put the needle down, although he did not put it away. His two friends, or cronies, gathered behind him, silently lending their support in case the hostility erupted into violence.

From the look in Alex's eyes, it was clear that was what he wanted. 

"I don't get it. What's your fucking problem, Dave? They're fucking animals! We're the omnipotent species on this planet, and by that we should get to do whatever the fuck we want to them! Including this!" Alex said, and he raised the needle and prepared to reach through the cage and jam it into Jeff.

But he didn't get to, as suddenly Gohan was there, grabbing Alex's hand. Alex looked in shock and then yelled in pain as Gohan squeezed his wrist, causing him to drop the needle. It shattered on the floor.

"That's ENOUGH, Alex." Gohan said. Alex snatched his wrist away and looked with undiguised anger at Gohan and David. Gohan wore a look of a peacemaker. David returned Alex's hostile eyes.

"Oh, so Mr. Clean Cut is gonna butt in too. I don't care, I'll kick both your asses myself!" David said, as he arched back his fist to throw a punch, angered greatly by having his fun ruined.

"Is that so?" came a female voice of ice.

Alex lowered his fist, and then his face went through a gamut of emotions as he tried to compose himself in front of his boss as Bulma walked in. She had been going home with Gohan when she has passed by the lab and noticed what was going on. Not wanting to make her prescence felt, she had kept out of sight as Gohan had kept Alex from hurting the monkey he had planned on brutalizing. Now she stared at Alex with eyes of ice. Her stress and worry over the events in her life had put her in a foul mood, and seeing this act of senseless cruelty had made her quite angry.

"Needlessly giving a specimen chemicals for no reason other then humour, and then attempting to attack a fellow employee in the act of this discresion? Just who do you think you are, Dr. Hardy, Dr. Angle, Dr Ryzing?" Bulma said, her anger quite apparent.

Alex and his two cronies stammered and tried to get an answer out. This was the final straw for Bulma.

"You're all fired. Get out of my sight."

"But Mrs. Briefs…" Alex tried to say.

"GET OUT OR I'LL HAVE SECURITY THROW YOU OUT!" Bulma screamed. Within seconds the three men were gone.

And like that, the rage went out of Bulma like a balloon. Her shoulders slumped, and his face fell.

"I'm tired Gohan. I'm going home." Bulma said, and slowly left the lab. Gohan stared after her.

"My god…I've never seen her so angry."

"And she couldn't have picked better targets for it. I feel like singing "Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye." David said. Gohan turned to David, his face unhappy.

"David! On any other day she wouldn't have fired those men! I know her, she's not like that! It's this damn poison incident!" Gohan said, and then turned away from his fellow scientist as his hand came up to his face to illustrate his distress. David patted his shoulder in an attempt of support.

"Relax Gohan. If what you say is true, then she'll probably hire them back…although I wouldn't like that…once she calms down again. Even if she doesn't, they're top scientists in their fields, they should have no problem finding another job, or another place for them to torment these poor animals." David said, looking over to Jeff. Jeff had calmed down, the threat to him gone, but it did not seem to sooth the scientist.

"You're really fond of them, aren't you?" Gohan said.

"There's so simular to us…yet so different…over 95% genetically identical…yet we humans…well, we're humans. So…strange." David said.

"Strange, David? What do you mean?"

David looked at Gohan.

"We possess a capacity to do such great things…yet we also possess the ability to commit utter atrocities, acts of cruelty and hatred. And why humans are this living paradox…I just wish I could understand it."

"THAT GOD DAMN MONKEY LOVER!" Alex yelled, punching his locker. His mind was ablaze with anger at David and Bulma. He couldn't believe the fucking bitch had fired him. All he'd been doing was having some fun! Didn't bitches understand fun?

"FUCK!" Alex cursed again. The noise finally attracted attention, as Steve Saunders popped his head in.

"Hey, what's going on? Alex, what's wrong?"

"I GOT FIRED! THAT FUCKING BITCH WE HAVE AS A BOSS FIRED ME!"

"What? Why?" Steve said, coming into the room.

"Don't you know? You know how fast gossip spreads around here!"

"No I was out running…errands. What happened?"

Alex spewed out a torrent of venom which was ¼ recount of what had happened and ¾ insults of Bulma and David.

"That damn monkey lover must be fucking her! Or he's fucking the monkeys! Yeah, he's probably humping his friends in between sending memos to that damn fucking bitch! He was probably waiting until me and Fred and Robert went to have fun and then brought that fucking bitch! I could fucking kill her, the motherfucking cunt!"

Steve was silent, and as Alex went back to pounding the locker, he answered with a slow voice that only he heard.

"Wouldn't we all."

"And that's what happened at work. Tell me son, am I losing it? Because I sure don't know." Bulma said. Trunks looked at his mother as she sat at a table, an undrunk cup of coffee beside her slowly getting cold. Not sure what to do, he walked over and hugged her. Bulma did not loosen at the contact.

"It's ok, Mom. They were doing the wrong thing…you just did what grandather probably would have done, what I would have done myself. Don't beat yourself up, you've been doing that enough already…" Trunks said.

Bulma sighed.

"You're right Trunks."

"Do you want me to hang around, Mom? I can cancel my date…"

"No, it's ok Trunks. I'll be fine. I'll look after Vegeta and Bra now, you've been doing it long enough. Go have some fun. It can't do this family any good if everyone is stressed out."

"Ok Mom." Trunks said. "You sure?"

"Yes Trunks. Go."

Trunks took one last look at his mother, and then went to get showered and changed.

Bulma continued to sit at the table, staring at it, her coffee getting colder.

She was still sitting there when she heard Trunks roar out in his Ferrari and go off into the night.

And still she sat, not speaking, not thinking, slowly drawing herself into nothingness as Vegeta and Bra slept in other rooms, each exhausted from their day.

The phone jangling startled her out of her grief and stress caused meditation. She reached over and picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Bulma? It's Gohan. They finally found some of the shattered glass bottle."

"Really?" Bulma said, sitting up. "Did you…"

There was silence on the line.

"Gohan."

"We found the residue. Someone put David's chemical into the bottle. That's how it got into Vegeta's system. And it gets worse."

Bulma slowly closed her eyes in numb horror, bracing herself for whatever came next and knowing it was futile.

"We obtained a partial fingerprint…it was Yamcha's. We matched it from his desert bandit days. It was the only print."

Bulma started shaking, partly in grief, partly in anger, but mostly an overpowering sense of fear, and betreyal.

"Bulma, I still haven't been able to find Yamcha. Until then, I think it would be best if you and your family didn't leave the house…"

The words flowed into Bulma's ears.

Then they slammed through the uncomprehending fog her mind had entered.

"TRUNKS!"

"Cha-la-head-cha-la…" Trunks sang as he drove down the street towards the east side of Satan City. The past day had been bad, but he wasn't going to let that ruin his evening. It wouldn't do any good for him, or anyone.

"With the smile of the Ultra Z…I'm gonna Ai-yi-yi-yi-ya…" Trunks sang, as he approached the first traffic light he would come to in the route he had choosen to take. He felt a slight pang of disappointment that he was going to have to finally slow down. He loved the feeling of the wind on his hair.

He eased off on the accelerator and pushed on the brake to stop for the red light.

Then confusion washed over his face. He wasn't slowing down. He pushed down on the pedal repeatly. Nothing. He roared through the light to a hail of horns.

Trunks tried to keep calm. First thing he had to do was get off the road so he wouldn't hurt anyone. He yanked on the wheel and drove off into a parking lot. 

Again, he hammered on the brake pedal. Nothing. His brakes were totally dead. He looked up in shock as his car roared towards the group of cars parked at the end of the lot.

And then he realized he didn't have any choice. He couldn't stop in time even if his brakes had been working. He reached down and clawed at his seatbelt, trying to leapt out of the car.

Then he heard a dull snap, and suddenly he realized he was holding the seatbelt release mechanism in his hand.

In the back of his mind, he realized his brakes hadn't failed. They had been tampered with.

He grabbed the belt and screamed, trying to burn it off with a ki blast.

Too late.

His car slammed into the collection of cars. There was a shattered of glass mixed with the shriek of grinding metal, and then all noises were consumed as Trunks, his car, and the others were consuming in a fireball of devouring flame.

The killer smirked, his mouth drawn in a cruel line and his eyes glittering with pleasure. He'd been watching Trunks for a while, and he knew the route he followed and when he would most likely need to use the brakes he had severed while Trunks had been busy with his poisoned father, the poison he had administered.

And now Trunks lay in front of him, his body sprawled on the concrete as his life's blood slowly poured out of him. Trunks had lucked out, in a sense. While he had been unable to burn off the seatbelt, the seatbelt he had fixed, in time to escape, he had done it so the explosion had not consumed him along with his car, but instead thrown him from the now burning wreck. But the killer doubted this would be of little comfort to the badly injured and burned hybrid if he woke up.

The killer planned that this would never happen. That was why he had watched. If the car hadn't finished the job, he would. Slowly, the killer drew his knife.

"While I really want to remove that second spawn of his loins from this world, you will be just as saitisfying, child…" the killer whispered, as moonlight glittered on his knife.

Then he heard the sirens in the distance, and he looked up. His face was crossed with a look of annoyance.

"I waited too long…took too long…" the killer whispered to himself, running a hand through his hair, which was as black as the night that surrounded him, lit only by the light of the burning cars. He looked down to the hybrid. He was dying, but the killer doubted the process would be complete before Trunks was given medical aid. Trunks was tough. Even such a bad car crash wouldn't kill him. He would live.

For now.

"For your mother, Trunks." The killer said, dropping a white sheet of paper on the prone body.

And then the killer turned and vanished into the night.

By the time the ambulance arrived, he was already long gone.

Bulma's face was pure white. The last few hours had been a blur of phone calls, doctors, and police. But her first moment of peace gave her no peace at all. All she could think of was that someone was out there, and he had tried to kill both her husband and her son.

Vegeta was going through his own reaction, that of pure and utter rage. His rage was only being held in check by Gohan and Goku.

Bra was confused on why someone had tried to hurt her father and brother. But her questions fell on deaf ears, as Bulma, for the hundredth time, looked at the sheet of paper that the police had found with Trunks.

It was written in the same spiky black script that had been found in Trunks's room.

__

Two down, you to go, Bulma.

It was signed the same thing. Ramtos Ge Ramos.

Once again, the shakes overcame her, and Bulma buried her face in her hands and began to cry.

And elsewhere, the killer was in preperation. He was done playing around. Final round had begun. It was time to go for Bulma's throat.

"Fate can be cruel, Bulma. It was cruel to me, as were you. But destiny can be cruel too. Bulma…Bra…prepare to face yours."

__

To be continued


	4. Chapter 4

Part 4

"I'm through playing games." Vegeta snarled to the people gather around the table. "We will solve this now, or we won't ever solve it. The fool police have even gotten involved thanks to Trunks's accident and even they have no clue what's going on."

Gohan was silent, but inside him, he knew Vegeta was right. Now that the police had gotten involved, the killer's free reign, enjoyed by his or her shadowed face, might end, and that might cause him to fade away.

Or act immediately before the police had a chance to get organized.

But Bulma hadn't had a choice in the matter. Accidents are always investigated to find out the cause if there are no witnesses, and it was clear that Trunks's crash had been no accident. To avoid trouble and persistant questioning, and any chance the police might suspect her or someone else because she appeared to not be being totally honest, Bulma had admitted to them that someone was after her and her family. She also admitted that she suspected that whoever had done this to her son had also poisoned her husband and terrorized her and her daughter

Then she had found out that she hadn't been the first.

To her horror, the police told her about a series of other murders they believed were all linked. The exact number of victims was unknown, but it was suspected to be at least twelve. Nearly all of them had been children, snatched from their beds, their schools, even from behind their parent's backs, and later found horribly murdered. The killer changed his name, script, and even his methods, but he always signed a name, and they all had a common thread running through them.

They were all written in foreign languages, some common, some ancient and near-forgotten.

And they all were a title of someone who considered himself a killer of the young and newly born, for they all denoted that.

Killer of Babies.

Destroyer of Young.

Executionour of Innocents.

Slaughterer of Lambs.

Besides that, the police had no other clues. The killer had covered his tracks to a degree that the police were no closer to solving the case then they were five years ago when they first began to notice the simularities.

The last victim of the person who was targeting Bulma now had been Triner Kiester. Bulma had been startled at the name. She knew the Kiesters, if very faintly. They had been a rich and powerful family. Now they were a ruin. The two were divorcing, each blaming the other for the death of their son, and the gossip papers were reporting that Edmund Kiester was beginning to drink heavily.

But the killer did not have such a predictable pattern. The fact that the Kiesters and the Briefs were both rich and powerful was moot. Of the child victims the man had claimed, they came from all sorts of famalies. Some were rich, most were middle class, and two were even in an economic class that could be considered poor. He had killed the children who were part of families and children who were being raised by single parents. Sex, age, or skin colour did not come into play in his choosing of victims. The group was as disverse as a random grouping off a street could be. If the killer had a pattern, it wasn't one the police could trace. 

Bulma had looked at the couples and parents. She could feel the sadness coming off those pictures, but she could discern no matter, despite a nagging feeling that there was one. But in her stressed and exhausted state of mind, she couldn't tell if it was genuine or a feeling that the police had inavertingly planted in their questioning of her.

She had told them about her suspections about Yamcha, and the police were currently looking for him. But he had disappeared, as if he had stepped out one evening and flown off to some unknown destination.

Or if he had gone into hiding.

Vegeta poisoned.

Trunks nearly killed in a car crash caused by sabotage.

Murdered children of other couples.

Was it possible? Could Yamcha have gone psychotic?

Or had he been like this all the time, having hid it away from her all the time she had known him?

Bulma didn't know. But she wasn't taking any chances. After the hospital, she didn't go back home. She instead went to the Capsole Corp, when she, Vegeta, and Bra had slept in a makeshift bedroom surrounded by security. The morning after had calmed her down somewhat, but tha calm was immediately shattered by what had happened in the hospital when she had gone back to visit her son.

But at the same time, as Gohan remembered the horrible incident that had nearly crushed Bulma completely, it also gave him hope from the actions taken to save him from a man who was virtually a stranger.

"What the hell are you talking about? That was a car crash! Something so simple couldn't kill my son!" Vegeta screamed at the doctor. The doctor, used to dealing with people who were yelling at him, merely adjusted his glasses and looked at the furious saiya-jin.

"Mr. Briefs, I don't know why you are suggesting, or how you can possibly think that such a severe car crash is simple, but it is not. Your son has third-degree burns over 90% of his body. The fact that he managed to survive the car crash is in itself, miraculous. But I'm afraid that the damage to his body may just be too severe. Far too many cells have been severely damaged, if not destroyed. His body can't maintain the fluid it needs to survive. Indeed, if we hadn't performed an emergency tracheostony, the swelling would have closed off his wind pipe and left him unable to breath. Even now, we are barely able to get air to his lungs. And that doesn't solve the problem of the fact that his body is slowly breaking down."

Vegeta wanted to reach out and grab the doctor, slap him around, hurt him, _kill him_, for suggesting such blasphemy. But his rage was slowly being replaced by the terrible horror that had fileld him for most of the Agony massacre, the horror that his son might die, and that Vegeta couldn't do anything about it.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Briefs, but if your son lives, it will be a miracle.

The fact of the Dragon Balls was something that never occurred to people until a person had died. 

But another fact did occur to Vegeta, as he spun on his heel and looked at his wife.

He almost stopped what he was about to say, the utter sick look on his wife's face shocked him that much. But his idea was too important to waste time on shocked pauses.

"Bulma! We have to get the…special experimental medicine Capsole Corp has been working on! That will save our son!" Vegeta said.

"Special experiemental…?" Bulma began, before Vegeta grabbed her.

"The senzu beans, woman!" he hissed in her ear. 

"…Oh, yes, the special medicine!" Bulma said, managing to go along with the act despite her horror.

"Special medicine? I haven't heard anything about a special medicine that Capsole Corp was working on…" the doctor said, before Bulma pulled hima side and began whispering into his ear.

"It's top secret, that's why!" Bulma lied, hoping the doctor didn't have some kind of a built in polygraph that would surely start ringing off the hook for the bullshit she was about to make up to explain what would happen when she gave her son a senzu bean. "We've been testing it endlessly, and while it seems to work, we didn't want to annouce it to the world until we were 100 perecent sure it did. But its healing abilities are marvelous, especially on burn victims!" 

The doctor stared at her silently, then began to nod.

"I understand. I'll keep my silence."

"Good. Now we just have to go and get the pill…"

"Pill?" the doctor said.

"Yes, why?" Vegeta answered, startling the doctor. But he answered Vegeta anyway.

"Mr. Briefs, your son's throat is swollen by the burn to the point he couldn't breathe on his own without the tracheostony, and that tube obstructs anything else. Your son can't swallow anything."

Bulma's face fell. Vegeta managed to hide his shock a bit better.

"That's ok." He said, trying to keep calm. "We'll just wait until the swelling goes down…"

The look on the doctor's face kept Vegeta from finishing.

"I'm sorry Mr. Briefs, but from the way his body is injured…your son will be long dead before the swelling could reduce enough for him to swallow something."

Gohan was glad of many things, but it didn't seem like he could be any more grateful that he had been waiting for Bulma in her makeshift bedroom when she came back. Her mood kept switching back and forth from hysterical crying jags to dead silence, while Vegeta was his usual utterly furious self, smashing everything he could get his hands on and swearing revenge on Yamcha. Gohan didn't bother pointing out that there was still no definate proof that Yamcha was doing this, it would be lost on Vegeta. Instead, Gohan had called his father to come in and keep Vegeta calm. The only good thing was that the last of the AE chemical was finally in the process of leaving Vegeta's system. The last thing Gohan needed on top of this chaos was another Vegeta energy-throwing seizure.

Once his father had arrived and calmed downed Vegeta, Gohan had managed to extract the information of Trunks's situation from the two of them. It made him as sick as Bulma felt.

"So Trunks can't swallow the bean?" Goku asked, being the last one to get it, as usual. "That's terrible! It's not right!"

"DAMN RIGHT IT'S NOT RIGHT KAKAROTTO!" Vegeta screamed, and seconds later Goku once again had Vegeta wrapped in a bear hug so that Vegeta couldn't go back to his apparent desire to dismantle the Capsole Corp buildings.

"Gohan! You're smart! There has to be some way for us to help Trunks! Because I'm damn sure not going to stand by and let him die!" Goku yelled over Vegeta's fury. Gohan didn't reply, but the fact that he began to walk around with his fingers pressed to his forehead signalled to Goku that he was thinking, and that was good enough for Goku.

Gohan called apon all the knowledge he had regarding burn victims, which wasn't much. But the fact that he had to save a friend drove him onward for an answer.

Which, by a grace of whatever doles out luck, came quickly to him.

"Toussan!" he said, turning to his father. "Do you have a senzu bean on you?"

"What? Of course!" Goku said, pulling it out and flipping it to his son. Vegeta stopped struggling as Bulma, who was in the midst of her stony silence mood, looked up.

"Do you have an idea, Gohan?" she asked.

Gohan grinned, although there was desperation in the grin.

"I just might."

David was looking over the boxes that had arrived for him that morning and cursing the loss of his mini fridge when Gohan suddenly ran into the laboratory that was serving as his.

"DAVID!" he yelled, causing David to bang his head against the top of the cupboard he was attempting to cram one of his boxes into. Rubbing his head, David stood up.

"Owowowowow. Gohan? Damn, what's wrong?" he asked.

Gohan handed him the senzu bean.

"Can you process this into a liquid medicine? A kind that could be fed into someone via a tube?" Gohan asked, his worry and fear began his voice a tad shrill.

David, for whatever reasons he had, smirked.

"Oh, you heard about that talent of mine with medicines, did you? I suppose I can try. What the heck is this, a bean?" David said, examining the small object.

"YES! Do it and HURRY! It's a matter of life or death!"

David's smirk vanished, replaced by a look of dead seriousness.

"Why didn't you say so? Ok, I'll need some bowls, a pinter, a crusher, some Dimondil, and some Gomaloril!" David said, and turned around with the bean. As Gohan hurried out the door to get what David had requested, Gohan could see he had already pulled some tolls from his makeshift new workstation and had already got to work.

It had been an agonizing ninety minutes as the small group had waited as David worked at a furious pace in his workstation. Gohan didn't know why his words had lit such a fire under David's butt, but they had, and thus David was able to step outside the lab with a test tube after so short a time. Such modification to medicines from pill administration to special oral or otherwide administration usually took several hours longer.

"Here you are, Gohan." David said, wiping sweat from his brow. "I worked as fast as I could."

Gohan snatched the tube.

"I'll thank you later. But I have to go, and go now!" Gohan yelled over his shoulder as he took off down the hall with his father, Vegeta, and Bulma. David watched them go, and then headed back into his makeshift lab.

And thus had Gohan found himself watching as the doctor carefully inserted a special food tube down Trunks's throat. Bulma stood closer, holding onto Vegeta. Goku was outside, waiting and hoping. Bulma had managed to convince the doctor that Gohan was the main doctor for the "special experimental medicine", but she had had no idea on what to call Goku, dressed as usual in his orange karate gi. Goku had saved her the trouble by volenteering to keep out of the way.

"Ok, it's inserted. I really would insist on a tube going right into the stomach, inserting another tube down Trunks's throat is rather dangerous. It could cut off the oxygen from his other tube."

"Doctor, if this medicine works, the healing process could try and remove the cut that the tube inserted into the stomach would go through, and that could cause all kinds of complications. We just need the other tube in for a few minutes, at most, and if this works, we won't be needing either." Gohan said, handing the doctor the test tube filled with the specially prepared senzu bean.

The doctor didn't reply, instead slowly and carefully taking the tube and placing it into the machine that would slide its contents up the tube and down Trunks's throat. Then, it would be up to fate if the senzu bean still worked.

The liquid began to slide up the tube.

Bulma held Vegeta.

Gohan prayed.

More liquid flowed down Trunks's throat.

Nothing happened.

The doctor watched, waiting.

Nothing.

Bulma made a small noise of utter despair.

And then, slowly, the burns that covered Trunks's face began to shrink, leaving pink, healed, whole skin.

"Holy shit. I don't believe it." The doctor said in shock as Trunks's fatal injuries vanished right in front of his eyes. Bulma then began to cry, but in joy.

Gohan was happy, but he also had to take action.

"Come on doctor! Remove those tubes! He doesn't need them anymore!" Gohan said.

The doctor was still a tad hesitant, but as Trunks continued to heal in front of him, he was only too happt to comply.

As the flashback faded for Gohan, he looked across the table at the man who had been the main figure at it. Trunks had woken up shortly after his body had been healed, and although it had taken a lot of lying, some alterations of records, and some money changing hands, Vegeta and Bulma were able to obtain an immediate discharge for him. They could solve the problem of the expected "miracle medicine" later.

"I agree with my father, and not just because I was involved in that accident. The killer may claim he's coming after Mom, but I'm damn sure not going to use her as bait. He may do so, but I'm more worried that he'll get scared and hide. If he does that, we may never find out who he is."

"Or even worse, he could hide until we dropped our guards and then strike." Goku suggested.

"I don't think so, father. His acts have all happened in close succession. If he still plans to come after Bulma, he'd probably do it soon, very soon. But I'm with Trunks, I'm not going to use Bulma as bait, and I'm not using Bra as bait either. They're both been through enough already." Gohan said.

"Your son's intelligence makes up for your lack of it, Kakarotto." Vegeta said.

"Father, save the insults for later. Let's concentrate on the problem." Trunks said.

"Agreed. I'll gather the evidence we've found, and then we can go over it."

"Agreed. And can we get something to eat? I'm hungry." Goku said.

The box that housed all the clues they had found was pitifully small, but Gohan didn't let that get him down. He was lucky to have as many clues as he did, thanks to the trust the police had in the Great Saiyaman. If it hadn't been for their gratefulness towards his superhero identity, Gohan would have never convinced them to loan them some of the stuff they had found from their searchs in the destroyed Capsole Corp Labs and the site of Trunks's car crash.

"Hey Gohan."

Gohan looked up to see David coming out of the kitchen that was nearby the complex of workstations that David was using now until his own workstation was rebuilt.

"David. Good to see you. Working late?"

"Yeah, you?"

"No. I suppose you heard about the Trunks accident?"

"Yeah, and I kind of guessed that your hurry to process that bean or whatever it was probably had something to do with that. Is he ok?"

Gohan was stunned slightly, but it quickly faded. He'd known David a long time, and he knew that the man was very astute and observational.

"Yes he is, thanks to you, David. Bulma would thank you herself, but she's busy attending to her daughter. The poor thing is exhausted from her confusion and the chaos going on around her. She still doesn't understand why they can't go home, poor thing. Bulma's making sure that Bra can fall asleep safely in the makeshift bedroom we set up for the Briefs last night."

"It was nothing. Just a favour for an old friend."  
Gohan was about to move on, but David's last sentence gave him pause.

"You knew Bulma?"

"Ha, I wish. More like I knew of her. We went to the same school for a short time. She wouldn't remember me, I was in Grade…7, maybe, when she was in her final year. We were miles apart on the social picking order. I just kind of admired her from afar. She wouldn't remember me ever if she knew me either."

"Oh, because you've grown up?"

"No, because of the accident."

"Accident?"

"Car accident. I wasn't too badly hurt, but my face was practically ruined. Of course, you can barely see it now, thanks to plastic surgery, but when it first happened…my god, the scars were terrible. If she remembered me, it would probably be for how I looked in those last few days before she left and moved on."

"Hmmmm. And so you eventually came to work for her. Small world, huh David?"

"Yeah, but I wouldn't want to paint it."

"True, true."

"You never did answer my question Gohan. What are you doing here so late?"

Gohan sighed.

"You'd probably figure it out anyway. My friends and I are going to try and figure out who this madman is ourselves. Even with the police involved, we don't trust them. So we're going to have a go at it. Wish us luck."

"Huh. Do you still think it's that Yamcha fellow?"

"I don't know. He's the strongest suspect."

"I can believe it. Maybe you should dreg the security camera footage of the last few days with that new computer search technique that was recently implemented, maybe you could turn up something more incriminating."

"Good idea…but still…"

"But still what?"

Gohan sighed again.

"I know I shouldn't tell you this, but the police have linked whoever has done these things to a serial child killer…I just can't believe it, David. I've known Yamcha my whole life, and I simply can't conceive of him being like this, doing stuff like this, having commited crimes like this!"

David was silent, then spoke. 

"You would be amazed at what people are hiding from you, Gohan." David said, and then turned back into the kitchen.

Gohan stared, then turned to head back to the security room where the group had planned to have their meeting.

Then David poked his head back out of the kitchen.

"Hey Gohan! I just thought of something. This meeting could take a long time. Would you like some drinks?"

"Drinks?" Gohan said, turning around. "Why?"

"Well, I order new boxes of drinks for my mini-fridge every month or so, but since that explosion destroyed it, I now have several boxes of drinks just sitting around my makeshift office. I can't keep them in a company fridge, they'd take up too much space, and if I don't keep them cold they lose their taste quickly, for me anyway. I may as well make some use of them."

"Well thanks David, but my arms are full and I can't…"

"Oh, don't worry. I'll bring them myself. I have nothing better to do, I just finished up what I came here to do tonight, which is why I was in the kitchen in the first place."

"Really? Thanks David."

"No problem. What room are you using for your discussions?"

"Security Room B, on this floor."

"Ok, I'll be along eventually. See you then."

"See you David."

"You should have told him to bring food also." Goku whined.

"Toussan, I think we have other things to worry about then food." Gohan said as he spread the evidence out on the table.

"You guys look this over, I have to go check on something myself." Gohan said, as he headed over to the banks of security monitors and sat down, tapping keys.

The two saiya-jins and hybrid looked over the evidence. There was the crushed glass bottle in a plastic bag, records of a fingerprint on that bottle and the records of who it matched, Yamcha. In nother bag was a slagged mess of metal that could once have been brake wires, and another slagged mess that could have once been part of a seatbelt. Various other records, talking about things Vegeta found worthless, such as the kind of ink that had been used in the defamation of Bra's bedroom, comparations of handwriting, and various other nonsense. Next came numerous records on the stalking of Vegeta and his family and how it was linked to the other murders suspected to belong to the same man who was after them. Vegeta and Trunks studied these the most closely. Goku had looked at each one in turn, and was looking at the last bit of evidence that Gohan had managed to finagle from the police for their study.

However, all Goku saw was a plastic bag. He squinted and turned it around and upside down, but he still couldn't see anything.

"Hey, what's this?" Goku said. Gohan looked up from his computer workings, pushed a last few keys, and went over to his father's side while the computer went to work on the search criteria Gohan had entered.

"I don't know, Toussan. It was with the other evidence, and I just grabbed it and got out of there as quickly as I could before the police decided to change their minds on loaning me the evidence."

Gohan took the bag and looked at it.

"Ah, I see. It's buried at the bottom, Toussan. No wonder you couldn't see it. Try not to breathe, I'm going to put it on the table.

The three held their breath as Gohan carefully opened the back and shook it gently, causing something that was nearly invisible to the eye to gently drift down onto the table. Gohan carefully picked it up as the others gathered around to see what it was.

A hair.

Black hair.

Gohan swallowed.

"That settles it. When I find Yamcha…" Vegeta cursed.

"Toussan, this still doesn't prove…" Trunks said, then stopped himself because he found he couldn't believe any differently either.

"It's not possible. How could Yamcha…" Goku said.

Then the computer beeped.

"Ah, my search is done." Gohan said, as he headed back into the chair. The three followed him, clustering around the chair Gohan sat down into.

"I commanded the computer to search all it's security camera footage records of the past few days, back until the beginning of the day this began, when you were poisoned, Vegeta. I asked for all descriptions of a man like Yamcha along with any recorded footage that could be construed as hostility between people or otherwise, just to be sure."

Calling up the findings of the search, Gohan began to go through the recorded footage.

There was a great deal of footage in which Yamcha appeared, but nothing happened in the footage that could be described as hostile. It was mostly footage of his entering and leaving the Capsole Corp, along with some footage of his waiting. In the reels, Yamcha only looked calm and prepared, without an inch of hostility.

The rest of the recordings were mostly from various employees as they cursed out their experiments or their fellow employees. Only the former contained hostility, as the latter was pratically all jokeful "I'm going to kill you!" and such.

Until Gohan came to the last bit of footage.

"Whoa, what have we here?" Trunks said as the picture of a furious Alex came up as Alex punched his locker and spewed venom about Bulma and David.

"Hey, he has black hair." Goku said.

"And a reason. I was there when Bulma fired him for being cruel to the animals. Then again, he's in the midst of a powerful rage, and I don't think he could keep it up long enough or high enough…but then again I really don't know…what's this?" Gohan said as Steve came into the picture. "It's Steve."

"You know him?" Vegeta said.

"Somewhat. He likes grossing me out with dirty jokes." Gohan said as Alex finished up his rant, grabbed his things and stormed out of the room.

Then Goku squinted at the camera.

"Gohan, rewind it a bit, will you?"

"Um, ok. Why, toussan?"  
"Just after Alex finishes his cursing, I think Steve said something before Alex left."

Gohan played the footage again.

"You're right. It looks like he whispered something to himself before Alex left, but he said it so softly that the camera didn't pick it up." Gohan said. He zoomed in and amplified the sound, but he still couldn't pick it up.

"Ok, I'm not sure, but I think he said "Wouldn't we all"." Gohan said.

"What did Alex say to him before Steev said that?" Goku asked.

Gohan rewound a bit more, and then Alez's last curse exploded from the speakers. The four reeled back, and Gohan silently cursed that he had forgotten he'd turned the sound up so high.

"I COULD FUCKING KILL HER, THE MOTHERFUCKING CUNT!" Video Alex screamed. Gohan leaned forward and pushed a button that paused the video.

"Wouldn't we all." Trunks said in a quote of Steve's last words. He looked at his father. Vegeta's face was torn.

"Ok, now I don't know who could be responsible, so find out so I can kill him!" Vegeta cursed.

"Already checking, Vegeta." Gohan said as his fingers began to blur around the keyboard.

"Mommy, are we gonna be ok?" Bra said from the bed she lay in.

"We'll be fine, honey." Bulma said, although she didn't believe her own words. "Daddy, Trunks, and Uncle Goku and Gohan are right down the hallway. They'll protect us."

"But why is a bad man after us? Why did he hurt Daddy and Trunks?"

"Who knows why some people do what they do?" came a voice from the door. Bulma nearly leapt out of her skin as she turned around.

"Hey! Mrs. Briefs, it's just me." David said. Bulma's startled reaction had startled him as well, and he was struggling to hold onto a tray he had brought in.

"Sorry David. You just scared the bejesus out of me." Bulma said, getting up to him David with the tray.

"No no, I've got it." David said, reading Bulma's body language for her intentions and motioning for her to stay seated. He set the tray down on a nearby table.

"Who's this, Mommy?" Bra said.

"Oh, this is Dr. Solomus. He works with your mommy. In fact, he's working rather late. What are you doing here, David?"

"Working late as you said. I spoke with Gohan and volenteered to get him some drinks. He mentioned you were here, so I thought you and your daughter might like something as well."

"Really? That's sweet David." Bulam said.

"Do you have orange juice?" Bra asked.

"Um, I don't know…uh, yes I do." David said, tossing a bottled drink to Bulma along with a straw. Soon Bra was sucking contentedly on the straw.

"I don't know if you drink coffee or tea, Mrs. Briefs, so I brough both."

"Coffee please. And David, you can call me Bulma. You saved my son's life, it's the least I can do." Bulma said, taking the paper cup of coffee David offered her. She added sugar and milk and sipped contently. It was just what she needed.

"Oh, it was nothing I would do for my boss." David said, scratching his head in some embarassment.

Then Trunks entered the room.

"Kaasan, we need you. We think you had better see this."

"Do you know him Bulma?" Gohan asked as Bulma stared at the tape of Steve's actions.

"I…don't know…but I do feel a strange sense of…recognition…god, what was it…?" Bulma said, sitting down and holding her head on her hands, trying to think.

"Oh yes, now I remember! He came into my office about a month ago. I remember because my secretary said he was very rude to her because he appeared to be in a great hurry. He issued a complaint that the security in his section wasn't tight enough, I think. He said that he was sure, although he had no proof, that people were slipping equipment he had developed or helped develop with his other scientists out for their own personal uses. He wanted more security so he could keep this from happening. However, since I could find no records of anything stolen or removed without a valid reason, and seeing how the only way I could increases security was to post more guards around the clock, which I found totally unnecessary, I had to turn him down. He was polite to me, but I could sense hostility behind that façade. I think he was very angry at me."

"And the final kicker." Gohan said, and everyone turned to him as the hybrid swung around in his chair.

"Alex may have seemed more hostile, but I have camera records of him being in the building until he left after you dismissed him, Bulma. But the camera records of Steve on that day show he was absent from the building from late morning to mid-afternoon."

"That was the time that father had his seizure that afternoon." Trunks said.

"And the only time whoever had sabotaged your car Trunks, could have gotten ino your house and out without being noticed. It took you over a hal-hour until you felt confident enough to leave your father alone. Plenty of time for someone to slip into your garage, cut your brakes, fuse your seat belt so it wouldn't open once it was closed, and leave."

Bulma's face had gone white again.

"And what reason did Steve give for his absence."

Gohan turned around and took a look.

"He told the doorman he was going to go run…errands."

As Bulma headed back to the makeshift bedroom, she suddenly could the terrifying idea that Bra would be gone when she got back and ran the rest of the way.

But she was wrong, as Bra was still there with David, just as she had left them. She sighed in relief.

"You're back. Well, while you were gone your daughter finally dozed off. She looks so sweet while she's asleep." David said as he stood up. He looked at Bulma's harried face. "What's wrong?"

"I think…we might have our killer." Bulma said in breathy shock.

"Really? Is it Yamcha?"

"No…" Bulma said, and told David the evidence her friends, husband, and son had gathered.

"Steve? You think its Steve?"

"I don't know…but…" Bulma said. She felt a sudden weakness and nearly fell as she attempted to sit down in a chair. David got up to help her and guided her into the chair he had been sitting in.

"But what?" David asked.

"But I don't…I can't…think it could be…Yamcha. So I gave Steve a call. Told him he was needed for an emergency. My friends and family are going to confront him…and then…I don't know…God, I feel so tired all of a sudden."

"Stress can do that to you." David said. "I'll leave you two alone now. I'd best get Gohan and his friends those drinks."

"What…you didn't…already?" Bulma yawned.

"No. I came to you first, since I figured you would probably need it more. But if they're gonna confront someone with a crime like the ones that have been commited against you…this could take all night. And I definitely think they'll get thirsty." David said.

With that, he left, and Bulma found herself looking at her daughter, even as she struggled to keep her eyes open from the sudden onslaught of exhasution that had been wrecked on her.

"Maybe…I'll just take a little…nap…"

Seconds later, Bulma was on the bed next to her daughter, fast asleep.

Steve was lucky in one case. Goku had been closer to the door then Vegeta had been.

If it hadn't been the case, Steve would have been dead the second he had walked in the door, his question of what the problem was dying in his throat as Vegeta leapt across the room at him. Had Goku not seen what Vegeta planned to do and grabbed him in mid-leap, Vegeta would have clenched his hands around Steve's throat and crushed it like a bug.

"KAKAROTTO!" Vegeta screamed as he tried to get at Steve. Steve, not sure what was happening but having a feeling it wasn't good for him, turned to run before Gohan slammed the door behind him.

"Hi Steve. Could you please sit down?" Gohan asked politely with an edge.

"What the fuck is going on here? Who the fuck is…" Steve's voice trailed off as Trunks came up from behind and firmly clamped a hand on Steve's shoulder.

"You'll know in a sec. Sit down." Trunks said, and shoved Steve down into the nerarest seat.

Steve quieted down, suddenly certain that making noise would be bad for him. He licked his lips nervously as he looked at the four men looking at him with intense eyes with a hint of anger.

"Why'd you do it Steve?" Gohan said.

"Do what?" Steve asked.

"Why did you poison me?" Vegeta asked, fury in his voice and his eyes flashing green.

"And sabotage my car?" Trunks said, before he took a swig of a glass bottle of juice. Indeed, the there were many of those bottles on the table, some full, some empty.

"And while you're at it, why don't you tell us why you've been stalking Bulma and why you want to KILL HER?!?!?!?" Goku finished by yelling in Steve's face. The fact that he might be confronting the man that had done these things had made Goku mad enough that he had dispensed with any pleasentries he might have given to Steve had they met in different circumstances.

Steve, for the most part, was cringing in his chair, as if he was trying to sink right into it to get away from all this angry people.

"What…wha…what are you talking about?"

"This." Gohan said in a low angry tone, and pressed a button on a labtop he had hooked up to the main security bank. Steve turned to look at the video where he decreed that everyone would probably want to kill Bulma.

After it was done, he turned and looked back at the four angry men. He gave a nervous chuckle.

"Oh guys…c'mon…you don't think I actually meant that? It was a joke…the american dream is to kill your boss. I was being sarcastic…"

"Then why did you whisper it?" Goku said.

"Uh, I didn't want to give Alex any idea I supported his angry wish to kill Bulma, so that's why I whispered it. I was making a joke…c'mon guys, you can't seriously think I…"

"I'm afarid we do, Steve." Gohan said. The nervous look on Steve's face melted into a look of fear, and a hint of betrayal.

"Gohan, I thought you were my friend! How can you think such a thing about me! I would never do such horrible things!" Steve protested.

"Well Steve, then maybe you can explain where you were on Tuesday during those several hours you were gone." Goku said. Steve turned to Goku.

"Why?"

"Why? Steve, it was during that exact timeframe that the car Trunks, that's Bulma's son, that purple-haired guy over there, drove was sabotaged. Trunks could have been killed in that crash!" Goku said

"But...but…" Steve stammered.

"It's not just that Steve. We had been thinking it might be someone else with black hair, but you also having black hair and being gone during those timelines…it just kind of adds up against you. You were in the lab where Vegeta was slipped a poison drink, you could have done it and left no trace by wearing gloves. You complain about how easily equipment from your lab was being taken and used for unoffical purposes, you could have abused that knowledge by taking equipment of your own and using it to get past the defenses of the Briefs house, get into Bra's bedroom by the second story window, and write all those sentences you wrote over Bra's room in so short a time! I'm sure Capsole Corp has devices or drugs or something else that would allow you to do that! So why don'' you confess Steve. We'll turn you over to the police if you do. If you keep stringing us along, I'll get very angry, and believe me, you do not want to see me when I am angry, especially when my friends have been hurt and threatened!"

Gohan stared at his father, amazed at what had just come out of his mouth. _Maybe Dad's a lot smarter then we give him credit for._

"It'd say Kakarott said it best, however much of a miracle that is, you baka." Vegeta hissed.

"So unless you have an explaination, buddy…" Trunks began.

"Why don't you just test his hair?"

The four men who had drawn steadily closer around Steve whirled at the sudden voice and found David standing in the doorway, leaning on the side, watching the proceedings.

"David! Oh it's you. How long have you been standing there?" Gohan said. He finally noticed his glasses had fogged up and took them off to clean them.

"Long enough."

"Dr. Solomus! Oh god, don't tell me you're in on this Gespato crap as well!" Steve said, his whitened face slowly colouring again.

"No, I'm the voice of reason. Sorry about your treatment Steve, thse four men are having their judgement influenced by their tempers." David said. "Gohan, you have a hair the police found as evidence in the parking lot. Just because it's black doesn't mean anything. If you're doing just by colour, Trunks should be interrogating everyone else in this room, including me." David said, pointing to his short and neatly cropped black hair. 

Gohan stared for a second, then smacked himself in the face.

"You're right Dave. I let my temper get the better of me. Ok Steve, give me a hair off your head. I'll go and run a quick test, and then we'll see. If they match…that will be too great of a coicidence, even for me."

Rain was beginning to pour outside the Capsole Corp when the figure finally came to it. He reached back and slicked back his hair, his fingers brushing over a deep cut in his cheek that had been inflicted long ago.

"Here at last." Yamcha said. 

"So just what WERE you doing when you were running errands, Dr. Saunders?" Trunks said, as he sipped at another bottle of juice, grateful that David had brought them, although he had taken a little long for Trunks's taste.

Steve sighed and took a nervous glance at Vegeta.

"Don't look at me like that you baka. I don't care what you were doing, provided it had nothing to do with hurting my family." Vegeta snarled. Steve shrank away and turned back to Trunks.

"Ok…if it will clear me…I was seeing my girlfriend."

Trunks stared incredulously.

"Your girlfriend?" Goku said in amazement.

"Yeah, I know, it's one hell of a crappy alibi, which is why I didn't blurt it right out when you guys were looking to start a new Spanish Inquisition on me. That, and I technically wasn't allowed." Steve said with some hesitation and a hint of shame.

"Not allowed? I would think so! Why not see your mate at night, when most of you humans do it?" Vegeta snorted. Steve looked over nervously.

"That's the thing…more often then not I find I have to work really late. I kept missing dates and other meetings with Sandra. But I really like her, so I decided that I would find other times to see her. So when it looks like we're not going to have a busy day…I go out and see her."

Then Steve, who didn't think he could be surprised any more, was surprised anew as Vegeta suddenly leaned over and inhaled through his nose over Steve. Steve recoiled.

"What was that about?" he asked increduously.

"He's telling the truth." Vegeta said, as he leaned away and stood up.

"Telling the…how can you tell, toussan?" Trunks asked.

"The act of sex produces a certain musk that permits the bodies of both partners. I can smell that musk on him. It's not strong enough that he could have committed the act recently, but it's not weak enough that he did it two days ago or earlier. Thus, he must have done the act yesterday…and since he spent practically the rest of that day in this building if the security camea footage is right, and his mate's sure refusal to meet him for such a late night liason as he said, he must have gone to meet her in that time." Vegeta said. Steve looked freaked at Vegeta's revelation.

Goku walked over and sniffed Steve himself.

"You're right. I can smell it myself…what you said sounds just about right, Vegeta." Goku said. Vegeta smirked with one corner of his mouth.

"That's why I'm the prince and you're just the lowly third class warrior, Kakarott." Vegeta said.

"Ok, you two can tell I had sex by SMELLING IT? And just what the hell are you two talking about anyway?" Steve asked, confusion written all over his face.

"That's not for you to know, Steve." Gohan's voice suddenly came as he walked into the room. "But this is: the hair samples don't match. This hair isn't yours."

Vegeta cursed, while Steve looked relieved.

"Does that mean I can go home?" Steve asked.

"It appears so, we don't have any reason to keep you here. If my father and Vegeta have enough faith that you didn't do it…"

"I didn't say that, you stupid baka! I just said he was telling the truth on where he had gone on those supposed "errands"!" Vegeta yelled. Steve cringed again.

"Vegeta, we don't have the proof to keep him here. We're not the police." Gohan said. "Go on Steve. He won't hurt you."

Steve hurridly got out of his chair and headed for the door.

"Hey, Steve." Vegeta said.

Steve turned.

"I'll let you go, but if I find out that you are the one who has done these crimes to me and my family, and that you have slipped away from me, I will track you down, and I will make you suffer." Vegeta hissed, and his hair momentarily flashed gold.

That was enough for Steve, as he turned tail and walked out the door as quickly as he could.

Yamcha finished pressing the buttons, and the electronically locked door slid open with a small whoosh of air. He wiped water from his rain-soaked black hair and face.

"Ok Bulma. I know you're here. Now I just have to find you."

"Well, if it's not Steve, then who is it?" said Goku.

Gohan sighed, not wanting to answer. With evidence eliminating Steve as a suspect, that brought the sights right back down on the person who had been in them from day one. Instead of answering, he picked up another juice bottle, screwed off the cap, and drank deeply.

"I think we all know the answer now." Trunks said softly.

Gohan kept drinking, and cursed when he ran out of juice.

"Toussan…I think we might have to accept the fact…"

"No!" yelled Goku. "Maybe I could think Yamcha would come after Bulma, as sad and horrible as that thought is, but you heard what the police said! Whoever's done this has killed before, taken the lives of children, and I can not ACCEPT THAT!"

"But who else is there?" Trunks said.

"I don't know! Maybe it was some random lunatic who saw you guys on the TV one day and decided to target you…but it can't be…I mean, it's not fair, he's not even here to defend himself…"

"The time for the defense of Yamcha is over, Kakarott." Vegeta said, as he cracked his knuckles. "I've seen all I need to see. Defense is over. It's time for sentencing."

Yamcha walked down the hallways of Capsole Corp. He didn't want to alert anyone to his prescene. What he needed to do would need to be done with him and Bulma, alone.

David was in the kitchen drinking one of his juice bottles when Steve came in, panting. Surprised, David nearly spat his juice on him.

"Steve. So what happened?"

"The hair samples didn't match, thank god, but I don't know if that will stop Mr. Briefs if he decides I did those horrible things to him and his son and to his daughter and his wife! Come on! I'm a pacifist! I couldn't hurt a fly!" Steve said, before he began to cough.

"Hey Steve, you all right?" David asked as he came forward, taking an open juice bottle off the counter. "You want something to drink?"

"Huh, no thanks, I'm fine…" Steve said. "But I could use an apple…I think they have a few in these fridges." He continued as he walked past David, leaving the scientist standing by the entrance to the kitchen.

"Apples? Why apples?" David asked.

"I dunno…" Steve said as he buried his head in the fridge, hunting for his fruit of choice. "Thye just always calmed me down…I think it's something in the natural sugars…and I definitely need to feel calm now. I mean, the whole idea of them accusing me of trying to kill Bulma and her family…my god, I've seen pictures of her daughter. Who could possibly want to hurt that sweet little gir-"

The sudden small _gurk!_ Steve suddenly heard behind him was just loud enough to give him pause.

Then the shattering crash of glass hitting the floor caused him to jump. Banging his head on the top of the fridge, he spun around to find David's bottle of juice lying on the ground, the fruit liquid slowly spreading out like the floor was bleeding purple blood.

"David?" he asked in a small voice.

There was no answer. Looking around for a weapon, Steve found a broom next to the fridge and began walking forward with it held out defensively.

"David? David, are you there? David, if this is a joke it's not funny!" Steve said, his voice quavering. The glass of David's juice bottle crunched under Steve's foot as he made his way towards the entranceway of the kitchen.

Then he heard footsteps. Gratefully, he put the broom down and walked out the entranceway.

"Hey that wasn't…" he began before his eyes went wide.

Then the knife plunged into his throat, cutting off Steve's scream before it could be uttered. A small bubbling moan came out, but then even that was silenced as the knife was jerked sideways, slicing Steve's throat wide open. Steve's last breath left him a small wheeze as his body hit the ground, blood soaking the floor.

"Who indeed." Said the killer, smirking at the body. "But he doesn't leave witnesses."

Gohan was never wholly sure what happened later. He had been in the midst of an argument with Vegeta and Trunks with his last word being _sprinkler_ when the door opened and Yamcha, soaked to the skin, walked into the room.

Everything seemed to go in slow motion as everyone turned and looked in shock at the scarred fighter, who was looking in shock back at them.

"What are you guys…?"

Then Yamcha didn't get to say anything else, because this time Goku wasn't closer.

Screaming, Vegeta leapt forward, going Super Saiya-jin in mid-leap, and grabbed Yamcha, his hands wrapping around his throat and pinning him to the wall.

"KILL YOU! KILL YOU! KILL YOU YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!!!"Vegeta screamed as he throttled Yamcha. Yamcha had his hands on Vegeta's arms and was futiley trying to pull Vegeta's hands off of him, but he was no match for Vegeta's saiya-jin strength and rage.

Then Goku, Gohan, and Trunks were on Vegeta, pulling him away from Yamcha, who collasped, breathing in great whooping gasps.

"LET ME GO! I'M GONNA KILL HIM! KILL HIM!" Vegeta screamed. The three others went SSJ as well in an attempt to hold Vegeta. They did, but barely, as Yamcha got up, holding his throat.

"Yamcha, I suggest you sit down." Gohan said as he struggled with Vegeta. Yamcha complied, sitting down, gasping in breath, his throat ragged. He was lucky. If he had been a normal man, Vegeta would have popped his head right off like a champange cork. But even all his training had barely kept him alive long enough for the three others to pull Vegeta off of him. He spied the juice bottles and gulped down three in sucession and was starting on a fourth when the three finally managed to calm Vegeta down enough so that he wouldn't attack Yamcha again.

"Ok Yamcha. I assume you know why this happened." Gohan said. Yamcha looked up.

"No."

Gohan arched his eyes.

"What?"

"You heard me, no! I don't know what the fuck is going on! I come back after my emergency trip and find I'm wanted by the police and that Bulma has made the charge and that she's not at her home and she's here and then I come here and Vegeta tries to kill me and what the HELL IS GOING ON!?!?!??!" Yamcha said in a big rush before he gulped down the rest of the juice bottle.

"You know damn well! You've been skulking around, stalking my wife and princess! You tried to kill me and Trunks, and you…YOU BASTARD!" Vegeta said, and leapt at Yamcha. Yamcha tried to back away so quickly he fell over the chair. He got up and scramed away, putting the table between him and Vegeta, who was again being held by the other three.

"Vegeta, hear him out! We owe him that much!" Trunks said to his furious father. "Yamcha, what was that about an emergency trip?"

Yamcha looked at the four men he called his friends, as confused as ever at these accusations.

"Yeah, emergency trip. I had to go out into the desert for a few days."

"The desert? Why?" Goku asked, as he managed to push Vegeta back into a chair. Yamcha sighed.

"I don't suppose I could find out why everyone thinks I'm some kind of murdering lunatic."

Gohan and Goku quickly gave Yamcha a summery of everything that had happened since Yamcha had last seen Bulma. Yamcha's face grew more and more shocked throught the whole thing, until the two finished he collasped in a chair.

"Oh god…and you actually thought I DID all that?" Yamcha said.

"The evidence against you is pretty bad, Yamcha." Gohan said. Now that he could actually speak with Yamcha, his disbelief that Yamcha could have commited all these acts was growing with every second. He knew people, and he could never belief Yamcha was possible of such atrocities. Watching Yamcha grow more and more horrified at what he had allegedly done had only cemented this view.

"Oh god…stalking Bulma? Trying to kill her family? Murdering children…HOW COULD YOU THINK I COULD DO THESE THINGS!?!?!?!" Yamcha yelled, horrified and offended by what these people had said he had done.

"But Yamcha, this all started practically the minute after you left Bulma after telling her you wished Bra could have been your daughter instead of Vegeta's. Then you just vanished without a trace. Where have you been?" Goku asked.

Yamcha sighed, drank more juice, then inhaled.

"Goku, you know I was once a desert bandit, right?"

"Yeah."

"I wasn't born like that, I was taught how to do it. The man who taught me was part of a small band of such thieves. He taught me how to do what I once did in my youth, and I was part of his group before I struck off on my own before I met you guys and eventually reformed. After I got home, I was confronted by one of his last students. They told me he was dying, and he wanted to see a few people before he passed on. I was one of them. So I left with him immediately, and I just got back now to find the police wanted me. The newspaper said Bulma had laid the charges for the attempted death of her son Trunks. To put it lightly, I was surprised at this. So I go to Bulma's home, only to find out she's here. So I come here to ask her what's going on, and I enter this room looking for her and Vegeta tries to kill me!"

"It's a good thing you entered this room first, you dead piece of shit!" Vegeta cursed.

"Vegeta, I said stay calm!" Goku screamed. It was so loud and sudden that it even startled Vegeta into silence.

"Thank you." Goku said.

"Yamcha, you said you found out that Bulma was staying here. How did you do that? The police are guarding her house. They know you, they would have arrested you, and even if you got awa, they would have called us to tell us about you. So how did you…?"

"Puar. She used her talent to disguise herself as a deliveryboy, and under that pretense she managed to get the information for me." Yamcha gasped, and drank more juice, trying to get the raw burning from Vegeta's attempted garrotting out of his throat.

"Where is Puar?" Gohan asked.

"She's outside. The chemical smell in here makes her sick, remember? But I'll go get her, she can verify my whole story. She was with me when I watched my old teacher die. And she can verify his existence, he gave Puar to me. And Puar has never told a lie in her life."

The four were silent.

"Guys, please believe me. I didn't do these things."

"But then how did your fingerprint get on the bottle that the poison was it?"

"I don't know! I just picked a random bottle out of that fridge, and then Vegeta came along and drank it after whats-his-name took it away from me. How would I know it had poison in it? I was going to drink it! If whats-his-name hadn't stopped me at the last minute, I would have!"

Gohan stepped forward.

"Yamcha, give me a hair. With it I can see if you're telling the truth…or somehow hiding your true self to us." Gohan said.

"Yeah, sure, here!" Yamcha said, ripping a hair out of his hand and handing it over. "You've got to believe me. If that helps, no problem!"

Goku sighed. His questions about Yamcha had been cleared up by Yamcha's answers. They were good enough for him. Like Gohan, he could never believe that Yamcha was capable of what had been done.

"Well, while you might be cleared, Yamcha, this leaves us with the problem that's been bothering us the whole time!" Goku said.

"Oh? What?" Yamcha asked, and began drinking down yet another bottle of juice.

"Who's doing this! I mean, who has black hair, wouldn't leave a fingerprint if he put poison in a bottle, has either the power or access to the technology to get into Bulma's house, get into Bra's bedroom and spraypaint it so quickly, know Vegeta was poisoned, time it so that he knew he could slip in and out of the house when both Trunks and Vegeta would be distracted so he could sabotage the car, and above all else, possess all the knowledge and the oppourtunities to pull all this off…"

The answer hit Son Goku right between the eyes like a bolt of lighting. The shock of realization was so great that even the four other men in the room could see it on his face.

"Toussan?" Gohan said.

"Oh my god, it's been staring us in the face all along. The killer is…"

"ARGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!" Yamcha suddenly screamed. "My body is on fire! Help me! It burns!" Yamcha wailed before collasping to the floor, wracked with convulsions.

"YAMCHA…oh god, I'm on fire too…ARGHHHHH!" Gohan said as he too collasped to the floor. Vegeta leapt to his feet.

"KAKAROTTO! What's going…ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!" Vegeta screamed as he to collasped, his body wracked in spasms and his limbs feeling like they were burning from the inside. His hands spasmed and knocked on of the still full bottles against the wall, where it shattered and left a star shaped pattern. Trunks went down with his father, overturning a chair as he tried to stay up on his feet and failing in it.

Even as Goku felt the same agony that was gripping his friends and son, he stared at the splashed juice against the wall and came to another, even more horrible realization.

"The drinks…they…were…poisoned!" Goku managed to gasp out before he too collasped in terrible burning pain. Yamcha had managed to speed up his body's reaction to the poison that had been laced into the juices the men had been drinking by drinking so much in so little time. That, and his body's fully human and thus weaker constitution had caused him to enter the wracking spasms at roughly the same time the poison the other four had slowly accumlated in their bodies from their drinking had finaly hit a high enough point to effect the saiya-jins and hybrids.

Despite the muscle spasms and the pain that was beyond belief, especially in his extremeties, Vegeta managed to summon his superhuman strength and drag himself out the door and down the hallway to where Bulma an Bra were sleeping. He had to warn them, he had to…

With the last of his strength, he yanked himself through the doorway.

And even as blood began to bubble out from his nostrils, Vegeta's mouth dropped in shock and horror.

Bulma and Bra were gone.

Just before his vision blurred, split, and filled with red, Vegeta saw the words painted above the bed his daughter had been sleeping in.

****

NOW THEY'RE MINE.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Vegeta screamed, and then was consumed by the burning redness.

Bulma came groggily back to life. The first thing she realized was that there was a bad taste in her mouth. The second was that she was no longer in a bed. She was chained to a wall.

"Wha…no!" Bulma cried faintly, as she tried to get free as the full realization hit her along with the fear. It wasn't possible. He couldn't have gotten past her husband and friends. This had to be a bad dream.

But as hard as Bulma tried, she couldn't wake up. As she jerked her head around and tried to get to her feet, she realized that the wall behind her felt cool and soft, almost rotten in places. She jerked her head around.

The wall she was chained to was a shrine to her, pictures from her teens all the way up to her present age. All of her. She saw some pictures that had been taken from newspapers, pictures that been of her and Vegeta, or Trunks, or others. Those people had been slashed out. It was only her.

And as she drew in breath to scream, she heard the low chuckle.

"Over 30 years of work. Of waiting. Of dreaming when this day would finally come."

Bulma's eyes widened in horror. She knew that voice.

As the killer stepped from the shadows to look apon his ultimate prize, Bulma's mouth dropped open and she began to make low noises that might have been words, if Bulma not been so shocked, horrified, and fearful.

"No…"she finally managed to get out as she looked at the killer's cruelly smirking face. "Not you…why…you…?"

"Why Bulma…" David smirked, tossing his knife from one hand to the other. "Were you expecting someone else?"

__

To Be Concluded!


	5. Chapter 5

Part 5
    
    Bulma looked in horror at the man that she had known as David Solomus, the man she had thought was a friend, the man who had taken her to this dark hell, the man who had tried to destroy her physically and mentally.

She had thought that when she confronted the man or woman who had been doing these things to her, she would feel only rage and use that fury to spew her venom at the killer. Now, as she was looking into his evil grinning eyes, she found she could say nothing but one word.

"Why?"

David smirked again, his terrible grin, full of malice and joyful glee, full of evil itself.

"Why?" he repeated. "That is a question that I have asked so many times in my life, Bulma. And I have found that it has no answer but the one you chose it will have. Indeed, I asked it so many times that it nearly consumed my mind, and that is the only truth I have learned from it. So tell me Bulma, why do you think?"

Bulma was silent, as her mouth opened and closed in an attempt to answer. But she could find none.

"I thought you were my friend…why…how…?"

David chuckled.

"Ah, the whine of the self-important, the false gods. How many times your kind emit that disgusting sound! If you seek to tear everything down, you should at least possess the strength to withstand it when you yourself are assaulted! But no. When destiny has come calling, I have seen nothing but self-pity and confusion, you who seek godhood! You disgust me, that is why!" David snorted, tossing his knife back and forth between his hands.

"David…what are you…talking about? Godhood…?"

David looked at Bulma again, contempt brewing in his eyes.

"Oh, as if your kind doesn't know! But if you wish to continue to profess your ignorance, I will explain it." He hissed. "Your kind is full of every flaw that every human being possesses. But you can't accept it. You must feel important, like perfect beings, like gods! But you can't find the strength or the ability within yourself to raise yourself to such a high level. So you leech it off others, others that you feel are below you! It takes many names. Prejudice, sexism, racism, call it what you will, but your kind need it, no matter what the name! You must leech the self-respect, the confidence, the very ability to feel happiness! In their pain, in their suffering, you steal the delusion that you are the perfection you desire. To feel like gods, you must make others feel less then human! But you are not gods, you are thieves! You are the worst kind of thieves! You don't take material possessions, you take the very building blocks of having a happy and contented life! You destroy people, and then as you grow up you forget about it, like they are pieces of garbage, like the excrement of your precious feelings! You go on, with the fruits you stole, and leave the people you ruined, shattered beyond repair, behind. You are the most disgusting beings on this planet, you and your kind!" David spat in Bulma's face.

Bulma stared into David's face, looking into the burning hatred tinged with terrible intentions. And she began to understand.

"You killed all those children."

"You're a smart woman, Bulma. After waiting so long, I have become the thief, I have become the shatterer. I always did admire your intelligence, Bulma. It's what attracted me to you in the first place."

"Oh kami…" Bulma whispered. The connection that she had sensed when she had been looking at photos of the victims of David's murderous rampage finally came to her. They had all gone to her school.

"But David…why? I don't know you…I can't recall you at all. And I was never among those groups which rejected people for who they were. I never made fun of anyone! Why do you hate me so?"

David's lips pulled away from his teeth as Bulma finished, and then suddenly she found the ice-cold metal of his knife at her throat.

"You are a _liar."_ He hissed. "But in a sense, I don't blame you. You don't know me? I don't blame you for being unable to recall the name of David Solomus. Try this one Bulma. Kyle Diondexter."

Bulma's eyes went wide with the name as recognition slashed through her mind.

"Oh my god…I remember you. You were that kid that had that terrible car accident in my last year of high school. I remember because it…"

"It scarred my face, terribly. It left me barely looking like a human. In a sense I think it was fate changing me into what I felt about myself: inhuman, a freak that was to be rejected and reviled for being who I was. Because that's what your kind did to me Bulma."

"What…my kind…?"

"I never fit in Bulma. I didn't like what the majority liked. I was never "hip" or "in-the-know". That should not have been a sin, Bulma. It should have made me different, but not evil. But in those walls, it was. And your kind used it to crucify me. Year after year, I was tormented. I wore glasses once Bulma. I had to replace them six times in two months because your kind kept shattering them while they gang-attacked me, holding my arms so I couldn't fight back. That was bad, but the females were even worse, with their accursed tongues and their bitter, hate-filled words. I had never done anything to them, nothing! Yet they treated me like Satan Incarnate. I didn't understand why, but I know now. They needed godhood. They couldn't accept their own flaws, their own faults, so they placed themselves on pillars to help them ignore it. Pillars they built on my back."

Bulma was silent.

"But I had one saving grace in all of this, Bulma. No, it wasn't my parents. My dad left my mother and I when I was four, and she turned to alcohol to cope with this loss and eventually used it to commit suicide over a long period of drunken years. The teachers and principal were too busy to help an individual student with his problems. No, my saving grace, my rock to cling to, was the most popular and liked girl in the school. Bulma Briefs."

Bulma didn't think that her sense of horror could grown any greater, but when her name came up in David, or Kyle's flashback of his past, it proved that the depth it could go to was endless.

"Oh, I knew that on the school system we were as far apart as could be. You were the queen, I was the guy who cleaned the stables, trying to keep myself from drowning in the shit of other people, shit they showered on me for their godhood. But I could dream, Bulma. I believed in destiny, and I believed that someday it would reward me for my pain, my suffering, and I would be granted your hand. And so I watched you as I was tormented day in and day out. When it came time that you would be leaving the school, I wondered how I would cope. But fate answered that question for me."

"The car accident."

"Oh, it was no accident, Bulma. The brakes of my mother's car were cut right in half! And I know this. While my mother tried to pull herself through the door of the police station, I was inside reading their reports while the cops tried to prevent her from pissing on their floors. Ah, my intelligence. It should have been such a blessing that I could easily understand such a complex document at the age of eleven. But it became my curse. Someone in a school who is smarter is someone to be feared and hated, and it added just another reason to torment me. Perhaps it was the reason that my brakes were cut. Or maybe it was a drunken dare. Or maybe it was something my mother had done, but I doubt that. My mother was too lost in her world of alcohol to do anything except eat, sleep, and shit, and if it hadn't been for me she would have ceased to do the first one as well. All I knew is someone cut those brakes. And that the crash had scarred my face so that I looked like a monster."

Bulma's mind began to make more connections.

"But your face…David…Kyle…it's not scarred at all."

"Ah yes, amazing what the doctors of today can do, huh? But it doesn't matter that the damage was fixed. It should have never happened Bulma. But it did. I thought it would cause me to be reviled even more. But to my surprise, the torment stopped outright. At first I thought it was because they were so disgusted with me now that they decided not to even waste the time on me, but when I began to be treated more friendly, I thought that destiny had finally rewarded me. Finally I would be accepted, perhaps even have friends, a privilage I had never had in my life. When I was invited to an end of year party, I spend long hours to make myself look as good as possible. Those hours should have been spent complentating, and coming to the realization that I was being set up for a fall."

Bulma's mouth dropped.

"No…they wouldn't…they didn't…not after what had happened…"

"Oh yes Bulma, they did. As I said, someone had cut those brakes. It could have been someone in my school, but I didn't know. But when I arrived at that party…I knew once and for all."

"What did they do?"

"They drew me in…and then dragged me from the building they were in and threw me down a bank into a river."

Bulma's mouth, again closing, dropped open again.

"No…"

"They did, and they laughed. But I will never forget the last words that one of them said to me before they tossed me down."

David paused.

"He said "What we're doing now, we can do anytime, loser. So keep your mouth shut, or we'll make sure you never open it again. Now get lost like the bitch you are!"" David said, his teething grinding around every words before he spat them out. "And they could. Nearly all my tormentors had money, more money then I ever did, and many had power. I had nothing, and they knew it, and to assure that their crimes would never be told, they tried to silence me with an attempt to take my life."

David stopped, his teeth grinding, his eyes burning with hate.

"The man who said those words to me was Edmund Kiester. And then he laughed and threw me down the banks to my possible death. Well, Edmund and all of them have found that what goes around comes around, and that payback is a bitch."

Bulma gaped.

"All those children you killed…they were…?"

"Indeed. As I said, the tormentors went on, leaving me shattered in their wake. And so they have paid the price. The tormentors grew up, and aquired things they found more precious then anything else. So I took them. The lesser ones I just tied to the same wall you are chained to, Bulma, and I took their lives. But the ringleaders, the ones who organized it all…I took their children. As they shattered me, I have shattered them, left them to drown in misery, grief, and hopeless despair. It is the fate they earned, and I relish it every time I see it in print, on TV, or anything else. Whoever said justice is blind must have been a fool."

"But David…or Kyle…don't you see? By destroying their lives, you have become as bad as they we-"

"SILENCE!" David screamed, and pressed the knife he had been holding against Bulma's throat this whole time harder against her skin. Bulma gasped as she felt the heat of her blood begin to trickle down the blade and drip onto her lower neck as the knife bit into her skin. "You have no right to say those words to me! You were the worst! I thought you were my angel, my salvation, the reward I deserved, and you turned out to be one of _them, _the worst one of all."

"But David…I don't…I never made fun of you. Never. I never made fun of anyone."

David snorted.

"Oh no, Bulma? Then I want you to think back. I want you to think really hard. Think of the night of June 12th, the year you graduated. Because that was the night that they threw me into the river. And that was the night when you revealed your true self and finally foretold my destiny!"

Bulma thought, and with a knife at her throat, she was able to recall far deeper memories then if it had been a normal instance.

And she remembered something she had long forgotten, and her horror grew even larger as she did.

"And then he said, that was no lady, that was my wife!" Raymond howled as he finished off his joke. Bulma burst out laughing with her girlfriend, and even the males got a chuckle out of it.

"Oh Raymond, you're so funny." Bulma said, as she walked along the bridge. She would be graduating soon, all her exams passed, and she was in the mood to celebrate. And that was what she had been doing, as she walked along with her closest friends of the, having a night on the town and loving it. Raymond aspired to be a stand-up comedian, and he used every oppourtunity to test his material. He'd had a steady stream of good jokes tonight, with the consequence that Bulma had found herself with weak knees more then once that night.

"Alright alright, I got another one." Raymond said, as they came to the end of the bridge. Bulma stopped and waited.

"A man walked into a bar." Raymond said in a deadpan voice.

Bulma waited.

"Ouch." Raymond concluded.

It took a few seconds for the meaning to hit Bulma, for this was the first time she had ever heard the joke. But when she got, she found it utterly hilarious and began to scream with laughter. She laughed so hard that she had to take a short walk away from her friends, trying to get air, but she just couldn't stop.

Until she looked up.

And saw a little boy, a boy with a face laced with hideous cuts, a boy who was wearing a torn, filthy, and soaking wet suit.

A boy who was staring at her with eyes of utter, complete, blazing hatred.

But before Bulma could say anything, the boy and turned and ran, and was swiftly swallowed by the shadows.

Bulma stared after him for a few seconds, before her friends, who had been laughing amongst themselves and had not seen the young form of Kyle emerge from the bank underneath the river and flee down the street, enveloped her again. And she again found herself laughing. Graduation was coming up, and Bulma soon found the incident lost in the back shutters of her teenaged mind, lost and forgotten.

Until now.

"Oh my god…" Bulma said, both in rememberance and in realization, of the incredible and cruel coincidences that had caused Kyle/David to come up from the river, from the terrible thing the people had done to him to ensure his silence in their role of the cause of his terrible injury, only to find the woman of his dreams laughing, seemingly at no one but him. A laugh that could be interpeted as mockery or scorn, of someone laughing at a lesser.

Like a god laughing at a sub-human.

"Oh David…"

"So, you do remember. So you must have some understanding of how I felt when I emerged from that lake after nearly drowning, after I learned for sure that those people had destroyed me and said there was nothing I could do about it, only to find the woman of my dreams, the woman that gave me my only reason for living, laughing at me. Laughing at my pain, laughing at me, showing her true colours! You were even worse then them! They kicked me until I fell down and couldn't get up, but you kicked me when I was down! You were the cruelest of them all, and that night I realized that the woman I loved despised me just like all the others."

"No, David no, I was out with my friends, one of them was telling jokes, I was laughing at that, I swear, I wasn't laughing at you…"

"LIAR!" David screamed, as he drew the knife away and belted Bulma across the face. "You ruined me, and you dare LIE about it? You bitch!" David screamed, and spat in Bulma's face. Bulma felt the saliva like it was coated and burning with the intense hatred that David now held for her.

David's moment of rage had passed, and he suddenly chuckled as he looked at Bulma, chained and terrified, tears beginning to run down her face.

"You don't think that I broke the second you laughed at me? Oh no. It was a long and gradual process. But when I was young I resisted it, I tried so hard. I was scared of the darkness that my tormentors stirred in me, the darkness that made me think incredibly violent thoughts and dreams of revenge and justice. I resisted, tried to keep it away by clinging to you, my true love, my only love. You were the only thing that held the darkness at bay, even as the years went on, the torment grew, and their torment gave the darkness strength and caused it to grow larger and larger, whispering that I should let it in, let the ones who tormented me suffer in turn. I knew it was wrong, and resisted. For so long I did. But when you laughed at me, when you showed your true side, when you showed me that you were a false god, just like them…I no longer had the strength or the will to resist the darkness. And I didn't want to. Not anymore."

David drew away, and walked over to a spot where he stood, obscured with shadows, the same shadows that had consumed his heart and mind so long ago. Moonlight glinted off his knife, now red with Bulma's blood.

"I saved you for last, Bulma. It was a long process, but I watched you at every step even as I tracked down everyone else who had hurt me and shattered them. It took me forever to get the scientific credentials to get a job at the Capsole Corp. To hack your home security system, to study you and your family's habits, to steal the equipment necessary to do some of my acts, to wait until it was just set up right. And those constant superhumans who threatened to destroy the earth haven't help either! My rage when I died at the hands of Buu was incredible, but it abated when I was wished back soon after. I have your friend Son Goku to thank for that." David/Kyle chuckled. "I was fortunate that that Agony woman missed me in her genocide as well."

Bulma stared, eyes wide.

"Oh yes, Bulma, I know the truth. That massacre last year wasn't some damn worldwide hallocination caused by some gas from a worldwide terrorist attack! I haven't watched you for over 30 years without learning a few things, Bulma. Which brings me to my next question. Why, Bulma?"

Bulma shuddered.

"Why what?"

"Why did you keep betraying me? Your laughing, that jammed the final knife into me, but you had to insist on twisting it. Yamcha was a fool, but he was a convient fool, for he provided a perfect person to frame. After he went into my fridge and managed to select the drink I had specially prepared for your husband, and after he said that little speech on how he wished Bra could have been his daughter, the setup was too perfect. All I had to do was plant a few ideas in your heads, and your minds and inner worries did the rest. Everyone was so concentrated on Yamcha they didn't bother looking elsewhere, the fools. Your husband calls Son Goku stupid, but he fell for my Yamcha ploy hardest of all. It didn't occur to him that the reason the room he was touring with you and the hallway to my old laboratory got so goddamn hot was that someone had purposely turned the heat up to ensure that Vegeta would be looking for a drink when he got into the room, a drink I would have conviently left out. Ah, Yamcha provided the perfect distraction when he accidentaly took the drink out and left a fingerprint, something I didn't leave because I was careful to wear gloves. But if Vegeta was as smart as he said, he would have realized that the heat and the drink were linked. And who knew how to turn up the heat in the building? Only someone who had worked there would known exactly how. And when Vegeta showed up, the only ones in the room were Yamcha and I. If he wasn't as stupid and paranoid as he was, he might have realized that, the poor idiotic fool." David laughed. "Which brings me to my next point. I didn't think you could do any worse then Yamcha, Bulma, but then you had to go and fall in love with an _alien."_

Bulma's eyes widened.

"Oh yes Bulma, I know Vegeta is an alien! As is your friend, Son Goku. And I ask you, how could you marry an alien, have his children? I was to be with you forever, my blood was to flow through the veins of your children, and you betray me with _Vegeta?_ A man who is not only an alien, but tried to destroy the whole earth? You haven't just betrayed me, you've betrayed your whole damn species!"

Then Bulma finally spoke.

"Shut up."

David spun towards her.

"What?"

"I said SHUT UP! I love Vegeta! I love my son and daughter! That you dare curse his name, that you dare revile my children because they are not your own, I should…"

Bulma didn't get to say anything else as David suddenly had his right hand around her throat. Her air was cut off as she suddenly found the knife David held pointing right at her eye.

"Shut up, you bitch, or I'll slice your cunt open and ram your accursed ovaries down your throat!" David hissed. Bulma, her moment of bravery dissolving, slumped down as she tried to breathe. Thankfully, David let go.

"Oh David…I saw you…saw your work…if you cared so much about those monkeys…then how can you be so cruel…?"

Bulma felt her chin being seized and she was yanked up to stare again into David's hateful eyes.

"How can I be so cruel? How come humanity can be so cruel? How come mankind can commit such evil, such inhuman acts for no reasons other then their own personel pathetic ones? Those monkeys, they should be called _Homo sapiens_. They deserve the title far more then we do. They never do anything except out of instinct, the purest and most natural force for making choices that ever existed, the force we humans have corrupted with our minds, our morals, and our greeds and flaws. They should be called the humans, for we are far more like animals then they will ever be!"

Bulma gulped.

"But David…if you feel this way…why didn't you do something about it…something right…instead of emulating all these hateful qualities. With your mind…you could have been something!"

David smirked.

"Oh, I am something Bulma. I am _Ramtos Ge Ramos,_ the Slaughter of Lambs. I am the one who will shatter all those who made me suffer. Everyone else is dead, broken. You're the last one, Bulma. And you are my masterpiece."

And as Bulma again stared into David's eyes, she began to grasp the true depths of his insanity. As society had rejected him, David had in turn rejected society. Its rules and ways no longer bound him like they bound everyone else. He had thrown away its moral code and developed his own as the society of one that he felt that he always was.

A code of morals, developed solely around the death and destruction of others.

How deep the shadows that had consumed Kyle Diondexter must have been.

"You won't…get away with this…my loved ones…will find you…"

David smirked again.

"Oh, you mean Vegeta and the Gang of Idiots? You think they will come and save you? Then how come they haven't already? You've been here a few hours, surely they would have noticed you were missing…" David chuckled, and Bulma's heart filled with ice.

"Bulma, you think I'm stupid to leave witnesses, especially people close to you? Oh no. When I served you drinks, I just laced yours and Bra's with a heavy dosage of tranquilizers. I laced every drink I gave Vegeta and co with fifty times the lethal dosage of thallium."

Bulma's eyes went wide again, and she began to cry.

"No…" she sobbed faintly.

"Oh yes. Why do you think I worked so hard to prepare that bean that healed your son's injuries? It was too risky for me to go after him in the hospital, and too risky to see if he lived or died. I had to draw him back to a situation where I could finish the job, and finish the last part of my revenge. Thallium is so useful, odorless, tasteless, practically untraceable, and so lethal that only a gram could kill a fully sized man. I didn't know how much Vegeta and Goku could take with their superhuman alien bodies, nor their sons with their hybrid bodies, so I made sure by putting ten grams of thallium in each bottle. Your son complained to me that I took so long to get the drinks to them after promising them. Too bad he noticed the time, but didn't notice that each juice bottle had already been opened. Stupidity must run in the family."

"But…why…they did nothing…they even saved your life…!"

"The children I took did nothing to me. But that did not save them. The sins of their parents, the evil their parents committed for their precious godhood, doomed them. The sins of the fathers shall be visited apon the sons. It took a long time Bulma, a long time to make the plans to take you. You are the last, and will be the best. I've left your friends to die in a burning agony with your husband and son. That is the price you will pay for betraying me."

"No…David…I didn't...I never…"

David ignored Bulma's pleas, his smirk back on his face.

"Oh yes…it has been fun. You received more warning and effort then the others ever did. I just took them. You, I told you I was coming. And I have come. I have taken almost everything from you. Now it is time for the last joy. It is time for the sins of the mother to be visited apon the daughter."

Bulma's mind flooded with shock. Her fear and horror over David's poisoning of her husband, son, and best friends had made her momentarily forget that he had mentioned Bra's name.

And that Bra had been his main goal from day one.

"NOOOOO!!!!!" Bulma screamed, as she started to thrash against the chains. David just laughed and reached overhead to turn on a lone light bulb.

And then Bra was revealed, still fast asleep, chained by her arms and legs apon a table. The shadows had hidden her, but they hid her no longer, as if David had banished them, as if the shadows that had consumed him now gave him mastery of the ones that could be seen with human eyes. Seeing this, Bulma began to scream again. David just smirked and tossed his knife in the air in a long, lazy arc.

"She will be my masterpiece, my ode to death, justice, and destiny. And you are going to watch, Bulma. You are going to be choked by the same cruel hand of fate that you and your kind used to choke me. And after I am done, after I have completed my last and greatest work, I am going to leave you here, Bulma, to whatever fate has in store for you. Maybe you will be lucky and die of starvation first, but I doubt that, for as soon as I leave the police are going to get a call in 24 hours where you are. I've been doing more then hacking your computers to figure out how to get in and out of your house as quickly as possible, I've been slowly stealing money from your company. I have enough to disappear, start over. And that is what I am going to do. Tonight, both Kyle Doindexter and David Solomus die with Bra Briefs, and I will vanish like the wind. You won't find me Bulma, I've made long preperations to be sure of it that by the time anything thinks to track me I will be long-gone, vanished without a trace. And all you'll be left with is your grief, your losses. The losses you have earned for your need of godhood! And after that…who knows what I will do? All I know is that there are thousands of false gods out there, thousands who deserve to be shattered just as you are about to be, Bulma!"

Bulma continued to scream, a cataphomy of refusal and terror, as David turned and began to walk over to where Bra was chained.

Puar slowly floated along the hallway, trying not to retch on the chemical smell. She had stood by for too long. Yamcha had promised to be out a long time ago, even if it was in handcuffs. But he had seemingly disappeared, and finally Puar had braved the building, and the horrid smell, to try and find her master and best friend.

"Yamcha?" she called, before coughing on the chemical smell. "Yamcha? Where are you?"

Then she saw the body.

"OH MY GOD!" she squeeled, and almost turned away and ran. But then two things struck her, one, that wasn't the right thing to do, and two, the figure had black hair. It could be Yamcha!

"Yamcha!" Puar yelled, floating over to the corpse. But it wasn't Yamcha, it was a man she had never seen before. Puar looked briefly into Steve's eyes, glazed with death, and then flew on as fast as she could, her locating a corpse making her realize that something was terribly wrong.

She found the security room in seconds.

"OH MY GOD!!!!!!!" she again squeeled as she flew in and found the Z Fighters writhing on the floor as the poison devoured their bodies from the inside. "YAMCHA!" she again squeeled as she saw him and flew over, but Yamcha had already slipped into a coma, as blood bubbled from his nostrils and mouth.

"Yamcha! Oh no! What happened here?" Puar said as she flew up and looked around, her mind going a mile a minute as she tried to figure out what to do.

Then a voice, faint and full of pain.

"Puar…!"

Puar looked around for the source of the voice, finding it almost immediately.

"Goku!" Puar said as she flew over to the saiya-jin, who lay on his back, unable to move except for brief spasms.

"Oh Goku, what happened?"

"Poi-son…" Goku whispered as blood bubbled from between his lips as the thallium within him wrecked havoc on his vein and nervous systems. "Pu-uar…get sen-zu...quick! Hurry!"

"Senzu? Senzu beans? Where?"

"An-y-where, ju-st HU-RRY!" Goku gasped. Puar stared, and then flew up, her mind now going at two miles a minute.

__

Need senzu where do I get senzu who would have senzu Goku too far Gohan too far Vegeta…VEGETA! His house is closest! Must find senzu!

With that, Puar utalized her transformation talent and transformed into a rocket and blasted right through the walls, heading for Bulma and Vegeta's house.

"NOOOOO!" Bulma again screamed, as David reached down and slowly rubbed his fingers down Bra's cheek.

"So beautiful…so young…so innocent. I can imagine what she could have turned out as if she had been ours, Bulma. But fate, as you have learned, is cruel." David smirked again, holding up his knife. "This is a vibro-blade, Bulma. We adapted it from some silly sci-fi movie. It vibrates, ever slightly, but intensely. And that vibration will allow it to cut through _anything._ So it should have no problem cutting through the skin of a hybrid child."

Puar exploded into Bulma's house and turned back into herself. Her head darted nervously back and forth. _Where could the beans be? This house is so big I could be searching for hours, hours I don't have! I need to find them, now!_

Puar forced herself to be calm. She had been in the top bracket of her transformation class, and her talent was only limited by her imagination. She had to use that talent to save her friends.

She concentrated.

And turned into a Senzu Bean Detector.

Bulma was in an agony of terror and fear, and as her sweat poured down her body, her mind was afire as she watched David laugh at her. He was utterly insane, crushed by the cruelties of life, but that was not going to stop his delusion that Bulma was the one who was ultimately responsible for all his pain.

Then she saw him draw the knife up as he prepared to "make a masterpiece" out of her daughter.

"Where should I start first?" he chuckled.

And then, in another combination that only fate could have done, Bra, who had slowly been coming to, finally threw the last of the cobwebs off and opened her eyes to see David bearing down on her with a knife.

"MOMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!" she screamed.

And with that, Bulma's rage exploded.

"YOU'RE NOT HURTING HER!"

Focussing all her anger and maternal protection into her body, Bulma yanked on the chains that bound her wrists as hard as she could, even as the tight metal cut into them and the pain screamed through her body.

And the walls behind her, made of soft plaster and wood that had been rotting for years, finally picked that time to give up the ghost as Bulma tore the chains right out of the wall.

David looked up at the loud noise.

"What the…?"

Then Bulma's fist slammed into his face, sending him reeling backwards. But he held onto the knife, and he quickly recovered to stare at her with hateful eyes.

"YOU BITCH!"

Bulma never knew where she found the ability to duck and dodge out of the way of the next few knife swipes and stabs, nor where she got the idea to grab her chains still bound around her wrists and whip it at David, bringing the heavy length of metal right down on his wrist.

David yelled as the chain slammed down on him. His fingers spasmed and dropped the knife, but he couldn't do anything as Bulma slammed the other chain right across his chest, causing the air to go out of him in a long wheezing gasp. Bulma decked him again and he went down in a stumbling heap.

"MOMMY!" Bra screamed again as David began to get to his feet again. Bulma reached down and picked up the knife with clumsy fingers.

"I'll kill you!" he screamed, and charged.

Bulma barely had time to get the knife in front of her as David ran at her. With a scream, she closed her eyes and thrust forward, and felt the knife sink into something soft, like sand.

Bulma opened her eyes. She had impaled David in his right side, and he was looking at the knife dumbly.

"No…" he finally whispered.

And then his knee gave out and he fell, taking the knife with him as he collasped to the ground.

Bulma sighed and gulped.

"Mommy!" Bra again said, and then only did Bulma look over to her daughter, still chained to the platform. Looking down at David, she noticed a small ring of keys on his belt and snatched it off, and then headed over to her daughter and enveloped her in a hug, sobbing in relief.

"Mommy! Oh mommy, I was so scared." Bra herself cried as she hugged her mother back.

"It's ok sweetie. It's over now. It's over." Bulma said, but she held Bra a while longer before finally disengaging herself from her daughter and going to work on the chains. She quickly had Bra free, and almost as an afterthought, she removed the chains that were still hanging from her wrists.

"Mommy." Bra said in relief, and hugged her mother again.

"Oh, it's ok sweetie...it's ok. We're ok now, now we have to go help Daddy and…"

Then she felt her daughter stiffen in her arms.

"MOMMY!" Bra said in sudden terror, and Bulma whirled around.

David was standing her, a tad unsteady but stable enough, pointing a gun at the two of them. Bulma gasped. She hadn't seen a gun, and then she realized he must have hidden it under his pant leg.

"Nice try Bulma." David said as he wiped blood from his nose. "You're pretty good, for an amateur." 

David chuckled as he tossed the knife up and caught it again, blood leaking from his chest in a slow but steady stream.

"But you glanced off a rib." He whispered, suddenly serious and full of hate again.

"Mommy…" Bra whispered in terror. Bulma put herself in front of Bra, trying to protect her from the lunaic who stood in front of them.

David sighed and then again snickered.

"Sorry Bulma." He said, cocking the hammer back. "But destiny is not so easily stopped."

Then there was a tremendous bang, and Bulma screamed as the bullet tore through her.

Puar flew back into the Capsole Corp building as fast as she could, clutching the bag of senzu beans to her body as tightly as she could. She flew to the security room and landed next to Yamcha, praying that he was still alive

"Yamcha! I brought senzu!" Puar said, for her best friend seemed the farthest along. She pulled a bean out of the bag, opened Yamcha's mouth, and used her hands to shove it down his throat, hoping his muscles would do the rest naturally.

Puar waited.

Nothing happened.

Despair began to claw at Puar. What if the senzu couldn't stop the effects of the poison?

Then Yamcha shuddered and his eyes popped open.

"What happened…Puar?"

"Yamcha!" she cried, hugging her friend. "You're ok! You were poisoned! So was Goku and his friends! We have to give them senzus!"

"What?" Yamcha said, flipping to his feet. "Why didn't you say so?"

Yamcha snatched the bag and hurridly administered senzus to the three other men in the room, who got to their feet as soon as their strength began to return.

"Oh thank god you were here Puar…but we have to find David! Before he can carry out his plans!" Gohan yelled.

"Where's Vegeta?" Goku asked, looking around.

"He crawled out the door, he must have tried to go check on Mom and Sis! Oh god, he drank more then any of us, I hope he's still alive!" Trunks said as he ran for the door and headed down the hallway.

Bulma's scream abruptly cut off, but the air was immediately shattered again as Bra began to scream as her mother fell back, blood spraying from her wound. Bulma fell off the other edge of the platform Bra had been chained to, and rolled a bit, clutching her wound and trying to stop the bleeding.

As blood continued to seep through her fingers, Bra was suddenly at her side.

"Mommy! Mommy! MOMMY!" she screamed, as David began to step around the platform, his cruel smirk on his face.

"Toussan!" Trunks said as he found his father lying in the doorway where Bra and Trunks had gone. He turned his father over and felt for a pulse.

"He's alive!" trunks said as Gohan, Goku, Yamcha, and Puar brought up the rear.

"Give him this!" Yamcha said, throwing a senzu bean at Yamcha. Trunks grabbed it and promptly shoved it down his father's throat.

A few seconds passed, and then Vegeta's eyes snapped open even as he yelled and leapt up. He looked at the three.

"Thank you you stupid baka!" he snapped at Yamcha. 

"Vegeta! The killer is David! He poisoned us with those drinks! He has Bulma and Bra!" Goku yelled.

"I know you idiot. I also know Bra's ki as well as I know my own." Vegeta said as he looked around, searching with his mind.

In a second he had it.

"DAVID!" he screamed, and slammed right through the wall, heading for his daughter.

"Mommy…" Bra said as David stood over the two women. Bulma looked at the man in horror as he again chuckled and raised the gun.

"Why did you have to free her, Bulma?" David asked.

Then he swung the gun over to Bra.

"Now I'll have to cripple her." He snarled, and cocked the hammer back.

"NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" Bulma screamed.

And then suddenly the wall where the shrine to Bulma in pictures lay suddenly exploded in a dust storm of rotten material, as if the pictures of Bulma had somehow aquired their own life and rage.

Then Vegeta flew through the hole, his hair ablaze with gold and his body crackling with energy, and slammed into David as hard as he could. David screamed as he was slammed backwards, the gun spinning from his fingers and flying off into the shadows as Vegeta slammed him against the wall with a sickening crack.

David began to slump but Vegeta didn't give him the chance as he grabbed David by the throat and prepared to squeeze.

"How dare you come after the things I cherish, you motherfucker!" Vegeta snarled in David's face.

But David showed no fear at all, only a rage and hatred that rivalled Vegeta as he brought his hand up. Only Bra could see that even with the suddenness of the attack and the injury inflicted apon him by it, David had still managed to hold onto his knife.

"DADDY, LOOK OUT!"

But Vegeta, consumed by rage and the desire for revenge, the same emotions that had driven David for decades, didn't hear his daughter until it was too late.

"How dare you try and interupt my destiny!" David snarled as he jammed the knife right into Vegeta's neck. Vegeta yelled in pain as a fountain of blood erupted from his shoulder as the knife sliced clear through Vegeta's caratoid artery and pierced his windpipe and esaphogus. The wound was terrible, and even Vegeta was immediately effected as his brain was cut off from a good amount of it's precious blood that continued to spray out of his neck at high pressure. David shoved off the weakening grip of the saiya-jin as Vegeta fell to his knees, the pain and weakness from the terrible wound clouding his mind long enough for David to slip free.

"Daddy!" Bra screamed, running to her father's side, but she gasped and swung back as David tried to grab her, even as blood began to pour from his mouth. Vegeta's attack had shattered his whole rib cage and punctured both his lungs, but David went on, driven by rage, hatred, and an undying obesession to complete his destiny. 

Bra tried to back away, but tripped in the process and fell down. David lunged for her, only to have Vegeta grab his boot. Vegeta lifted up his hand as he tried to charge a ki blast, but David kicked him in the face first. The kick wouldn't have even fazed Vegeta beforehand, but in this case it caused his wound to open even more. The ki blast faded as Vegeta collasped, trying to breath through his heavily damaged throat even as his life liquid continued to pour from his neck.

"Daddy! Help!" Bra screamed as she crabwalked away from David, who half-stumbled, half crawled after her, blood pouring from his mouth.

And then he suddenly lunged forward and grabbed her ankle. Bra scramed and tried to get away, but while she was was stronger then a normal little girl, even her strength could not compare to the unholy power David's madness infused with him. His hand slick with blood, David pinned Bra to the ground and lifted up his bloody knife. It was time to end it.

"I may not be able to make you a masterpiece, and I may not be able to shatter others, but I will not be denied my destiny of destroying you!" David screamed, and raised his knife.

CLICK.

David looked up from Bra to see Bulma standing before him, his gun in her hands.

"Destiny can go fuck itself." She snarled, and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet took David right though his forehead, blasting his brains to jelly that exploded out the back of his head. The force of the bullet caused David to reel back, and Bra pulled herself from underneath him and ran to her mother.

Then David suddenly leaned forward again. The life was fading from his eyes, but Bulma could see two predominant things. One was confusion.

And the other was a question.

WHY?

Bulma swallowed hard.

And then with a scream of pure rage, she emptied the gun into David. He jerked amongst the bullets and then fell, slowly, onto his side.

And with that, the Slaughterer of Lambs was gone, his terrible quest uncompleted.

"Bulma!" came a voice from behind her, and then Gohan was by her side, holding her, supporting her. She saw Goku rush by him, a senzu bean held out and being given to Vegeta. She could feel her daughter holding onto her, and then Trunks was there too, asking if she was all right, asking if Bra was all right, trying to take a look at her shoulder wound even as Gohan was trying to do the same thing, holding onto her children as Gohan removed himself and went to check on David. He felt for a pulse and shook his head.

"Poor twisted soul…I never knew…" Gohan said quietly. Bulma watched, and then suddenly Vegeta was there, the terrible wound in his neck healed. He was smiling.

"That's why I love you." He said, as he looked at David's body, and smirked with one corner of his mouth. "Go to hell, you son of a bitch."

Bulma felt none of the joy Vegeta did. She was remembering the tale that David had told her, a tale of love and good intentions, twisted and mutating into a undying hate by the hatred of others.

It shouldn't have been this way.

But like how David's face had been scarred, it had been.

And as police sirens sounded in the distance, something began to happen. While the wall had been disentigrated by Vegeta's raging entrance, somehow the pictures that had been placed on that wall had escaped destruction. The way Vegeta had blasted in had also created a great gust of wind, which had been long in fading and strong enough to keep the photos dancing in the air.

But now the wind was gone, and the photos began to drift down. Slowly, they landed on the man who had one been Kyle Doindexter, and who had called himself David Solomus, but in reality had been something else.

A dark ruined soul with an overpowering bloodthirst.

As the group watched, as Bulma held her family, as the sirens drew closer, she watched as the photos drifted down onto David's body, and then for whatever reason she had, she began to cry.

And as the last of the photos drifted onto David in a makeshift wake, the last photo, the sole one of Bra Briefs, drifted down and covered David's face, shutting away his eternal gaze that asked the question of why the woman he had loved had killed him.

And at long last, it was over.

"And that was it. We offered Bulma a senzu, but she refused, said it would look strange if the police came and found she had struggled with a killer and didn't have a scratch on her. Then the police were there, and we spoke with them, told them what we knew and what we had guessed, although we left out the part that we had been poisoned. Bulma was taken off to the hospital with Bra, we went with the police to give some more info, and eventually they released us. Bulma had several witnesses backing her up that she had shot David in self-defense, so they didn't even bother disputing the claim. All those newspaper pictures of Bulma and that shrine to all the children David had killed in another part of that warehouse David had killed his victims in allowed the case to be sealed quickly. And so our lives have settled down to some form of normalcy once again." Gohan concluded to Goten and Marron, whom he had told the whole story to when they had gotten back from their honeymoon and wanted to know what was going on from the bits of news they had managed to hear in Jamaica.

"Wow. That's one hell of a story." Goten said, holding his new wife's hand.

"I know. It's even harder to believe it only took a week to play out, or that it only happened two weeks ago." Gohan said, adjusting his glasses. Capsole Corp was still in shock over the deathes of Steve and David/Kyle, and everywhere Gohan went, the sentiment was the same.

No one could believe that David, after all the time they had known him, had really been a psychopathic killer.

Gohan, in some ways, still couldn't believe it himself. David had been perfectly camoflaged, accepted and unsuspected. But as Bulma had told the police, David Solomus had just been a shell, a tool for the totally amoral killer that lurked beneath it.

And yet…

"Did you hear what the police found when they searched the house David lived in?" Gohan asked his younger brother. Goten shook his head. "They actually found a small chamber that contained a fully written and signed confession on all the people David had killed in total, not just the ones under his Ramtos Ge Ramos penname. David appeared to have taken over forty lives, over a period of thirty years. The confession gave detail descriptions of the times he took them and how he killed them, giving many details that only the police knew. They also found several other weapons suspected in being used in other murders in the chamber as well."

Goten gaped.

"But why would David do that?"

Gohan was silent.

"The police were wondering too…until they came to the end of the confession. They sent me a copy. This is what it said." Gohan said as he removed a folded piece of paper and handed it to Goten. Goten unfolded it and read carefully.

__

This confession is written so that the truth will be known following my possible accidental death. As I write this, my mission is not complete, the last card is to be played and the worst of them all is to be shattered. But those I have shattered suffer only for me, for the sins they commited against me. If fate decides I will not complete my mission and my destiny, there is no more reason for them to suffer for my sake if I am beyond the state to enjoy their pain. Thus, if something happens to me before am I done, and only then, only then will I allow them a sense of closure. While they live and I live, they will be shattered, but if I am gone…there is no point in it. This is why I have written this, and this is how I expect it to be used. Kyle Diondexter aka David Solomus.

"Shit." Goten said softly. "That's almost noble, in some twisted sense."

"That's what I thought…and that's why I wonder if David was as bad as Bulma said. In her statement after the whole incident she made him out to be the devil incarnate, but after what she went through, I don't blame her. But I have to wonder if there wasn't some kind of split that lurked within David, the overpowering side that made him commit all these acts under his delusion of destiny and false gods…and another side, the side of whom he might have been if fate hadn't brought about the events that warped his mind. The side that cared enough to help those animals, the side that was present when David wrote that. But I don't know, Goten. Only David did. And dead men tell no tales."

Bulma watched the setting sun, her arm still in a sling from the bullet wound. And she was deep in thought.

She had told the police the bare minimum about David, making him out to be a rotten apple who had been obesessed with her when he was young and been unable to let go of that obesession, even as his twisted mind turned it into a desire to destroy her.

She hadn't told anyone about David's tale of his fall, of the cruel circumstances that had turned her love for her into furious hate, of how a man abused by fate turned around and tried to wield fate as a weapon against those his rage desired to destroy, in which he had almost succeeded, only falling short at the last minute.

She thought of dreams, and of nightmares, and how like love and hate, they two were the flip sides of the same coin, and how in today's world, both could flip to the other side with terrifying ease but could not make the fatal turn back so easily.

And most of all, she thought of the cruelty of the human race. How pointless and disgusting it was, and yet how much it seemed to be needed by so many people, people who would crack and collaspe without it. The same people who had tormented a young child named Kyle Doindexter.

She knew Kyle was not the only one. He was joined by many others, all who suffered for the sake of another's sick pleasure, in places where everyone should have treated them as equals. Sexism and racism, and all other forms of prejudice may have been hard to kill, but to think that such systems of "elites" should spring up in a school of all places was a terrible thought, one that made Bulma shudder.

But it happened.

It happened far too much.

And people had to endure it and go on.

Some managed to find the strength, within themselves, or from others, to reach down and let go of the hurt and the anger that others planted and grew within them with their physical and emotional abuse, and go on to accomplish what they want to accomplish.

Others didn't find the strength to let go fully. Sometimes this let to tragedy, sometimes to the opposite, and sometimes to nothing all.

And then there were the ones who couldn't let go, and were drowned by the misery and hurt they felt, even their potent rage being snuffed out by that overwhelming tide of sadness. They turned to drugs, alcohol, food, anything they could to chase away the pain, knowing that it was ultimately futile. Others took their own lives, seemingly unable to find anything that would make life different.

And then…there were the ones like David. The ones who used the hurt and misery they felt to augment their anger, their fury at feeling such pain, and let it fester and grow inside them until it had consumed their whole mind and blighted their soul, until it had twisted and warped them, until they lived only for the sole thing their fevered and hating minds desired for redemption and an end to the pain that had consumed them: the destruction of those who had done this to them.

The rage.

The hatred.

The bloodthirst.

"Mommy."

Bulma looked down from her thoughts to find Bra at her side. Smiling, she reached down and ruffled her daughter's hair. Children had a knack from rebounding from adversity, and Bra had swiftly recovered from the terrible trauma that had entered her life just two short weeks ago. The events would leave no scars on her daughter. But on herself…Bulma wasn't so sure.

"Oh, pretty." Bra said, looking at the sunset. Bulma was silent, as you looked apon the setting star.

__

Fate IS cruel. Bulma thought. _But while it is, the sun will set and rise on a new day, full of new possibilities. Anything can happen…I hope. But the past is the past, and what happens happens. All we can do is look on to the next day._

Bulma looked on. She would never tell anyone the truth about David. She did not think that they could realize or accept the monster David had become had once been human.

But had others made this monster?

Or had David done it to himself?

"Ramtos Ge Ramos." Bulma whispered. "Slaughterer of Lambs in one ancient language, but something else in another one. The beginning and end of all things. And thus it is for David. It began long ago, and it has ended now."

Bra did not say anything, but nodded in silent understanding.

And thus the sun set on the Briefs family. And everything in the world was again calm and peaceful.

For now.

__

The End

So, what did you think? Not too bad, huh? I'm not too bad at writing these psychological thrillers. So, if you can, nice long review. Everyone wanted this to be finished as quickly as possible so I spent all night writing the final chapter because I love you all so much. And by the way Ice Queen, I fulfilled your curse as best I could. Vegeta had his random epiletic seizures, and Goku solved the "deep dark problem." Since Chaozu didn't appear in this story, I couldn't do that part. So there.

And just to tell you. David's cause of madness is something I know all too well. So remember this story, and what happened in it, if you ever find yourself opening your mouth with the intent to hurt another. 

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me"

Bullshit.


End file.
